Garth Rattray THE INFLUX of Haitian refugees should be a lesson to us all. There is something uniquely tragic about people uprooting, leaving the land of their birth and the only life that they have ever known. They risk their lives for an uncertain future and throw themselves on the mercy of foreign strangers. Most people flee their country of origin because of violence while others flee from political persecution, oppressive poverty or famine.
Jamaica started out this year with an unprecedented number of violent crimes and brutal murders. It made me wonder where we would seek refuge should our situation deteriorate into anarchy. Since the United States, Canada and Britain only issue a finite number of non-immigrant and immigrant visas to Jamaicans annually, only a relative few will be allowed to visit or migrate to those countries, the rest would be forced to seek asylum as refugees should things become intolerable.
Cuba is only 90 nautical miles away but it is communist and poor. Our South Ameri-can neighbour, Colombia, is 350 nautical miles away and although drug cartels there have been doing "business" with Jamaicans for many years, its divergent culture and lack of prosperity makes it an unsuitable candidate for sanctuary. Grand Cayman is 367 nautical miles away but they don't want us. Between 380 and 400 nautical miles away lies Haiti but we all know what's going on there. That leaves our most prosperous but farthest neighbour, Florida, which is 750 nautical miles away. With the inordinate distance, heightened state of security since 9-11 and vigilance against Cuban and especially Haitian refugees, our people wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance of making it to American soil.
The point that I'm trying to make is this, now that we see the plight of the Haitian refugees close-up, we need to remind ourselves that we have nowhere to run if we continue to destroy the homeland that we all must share. It is moronic for people to wreck our society for short-term, ill-gotten gains and for others to either benefit from them or turn a blind eye. Daily reports of people being shot and killed, found suffering from gunshot wounds, chopped to death, stabbed to death or shot and injured dominate the news. We see a catalogue of double and triple murders, of entire communities besieged by fear and of our society's inability to curtail the onslaught of criminality sweeping across the land. Violence, corruption, inertia, apathy and greed are killing us.
CAREFUL CRIMINAL GANGS
Many still futilely expect the police and the current administration to solve the ever-increasing problem of crime when in reality only the people of this country, the sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, spouses, neighbours, you and I can stop it. If we aren't careful criminal gangs may eventually organise themselves into paramilitary units, not to wage duopolistic political warfare but to further secure their illegal drug trade. Then we may end up something like Haiti with heavily armed gangs openly challenging and combating our security forces for the control of certain communities. Our only saving grace (so far) is that we have a multiplicity of autonomous gangs that subsist on a flagitious subculture and an underground economy that currently satisfies their needs.
We know things are deplorable when our citizenry and police are slaughtered at will but the killing of Senior Superintendent of Police Lloyd McDonald has heralded a hitherto unrealised pinnacle in terrorism against the state and its representatives. It marked a new low in this country's already tarnished history. The slaying of the SSP is tantamount to throwing down the gauntlet. It is like the taking of the rook (the third most important chess piece) in a deadly contest of power and control over the populace (a.k.a. pawns).
We can't continue in this ridiculous vein, at some point Jamaica will succumb. There won't be any foreign power coming to save us and it's blatantly obvious that our politicians are in way over their heads. As a rule, the effectiveness of the police is facilitated solely by the extent to which people are willing to co-operate with criminal investigations. Only we can save our beloved country.
Dr Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.
