Kay Osborne, Contributor
Students from Corporate Area schools participate in an islandwide demonstration against violence aimed at children.- File
AMONG THE grave, social issues that bombard our citizens, none is more grim and ghastly, more horrific and ominous, more insistent and urgent and more deserving of our full and sustained attention and action than the neglect, abuse and relentless slaughter of our children.
The evidence is clear and complete: Our children are under attack; all are in mortal danger; some are targeted, intended victims; others are collateral damage.
The urgent question is: What to do about this sustained assault on innocent children everywhere?
There are responses at several levels.
On an individual level, the unspeakable suffering that victimised children's families and loved ones endure deeply move all but the most hardened among us.
Thoughtful people everywhere adults and children struggle with the awful images of harm that our minds conjure up as we imagine the unimaginable suffering that each victimised child endured during his or her encounter with evil.
OUTRAGE
The natural reaction to the atrocities against our children is to want to do whatever it takes to appease the suffering families, calm society's fears and reduce, even eliminate the sense of outrage and powerlessness that citizens everywhere feel each time a new horror confronts us.
These are valid goals, but the means to achieve them require screens and commentary.
For example, when one considers the slaughter of our children one must also consider Jamaica's abusive environment of harm to children and the state's role in this state of affairs.
Take the visual media.
Every day children everywhere watch obscene, perverted, sexually explicit, pornographic and violent material that is home delivered on some cable channels.
PERVERTED AND
EXPLOITATIVE MATERIAL
The Jamaican state allows, facilitates and causes this perverted and exploitative material, including a dedicated pornographic channel, to enter Jamaican homes willy-nilly, despite the clear and certain knowledge of those in authority that Jamaica is rife with much too much irresponsible sexual conduct; too many irresponsible parents; far too many absent fathers and barrel children who fend for themselves; too many parents who are themselves children; too many children who are themselves heads of households; far too many adults who do not monitor what children watch on television.
Those in authority also know that children act out what they watch on television. They know that the inappropriate material on cable television is corrupting and damaging to our youth.
GASOLENE ON A
RAGING INFERNO
I am not suggesting that Government should parent our children. Parents are responsible for parenting their children. I am suggesting, however, that given the prevailing conditions of Jamaican families and children, that it is at least irresponsible that the state, under the guise of free market entertainment, pours gasolene on a raging inferno knowing that our children are further victimised as a result.
Indeed, by allowing, facilitating and causing obscene, perverted, pornographic material to enter Jamaican homes willy-nilly, the past administration failed to protect families and children from the resulting harm and violates the Children's Code of Programming that the Government's own Broadcasting Commission tries to enforce.
Moreover, by facilitating and causing pornographic material to enter Jamaican homes willy-nilly, this action alone undermines the values and attitudes foundation upon which ethical conduct is necessarily built.
More ironic still, is that with children under siege from pornographic and violent content, with children everywhere victimised, the exiting administration's cable television priority was to try to speed through new legislation to cause advertising and related revenues to migrate to cable.
More recently we learn that another priority of those in authority is to facilitate and cause a single carrier to bring into Jamaican homes no less than 250 cable channels.
This development begs the question: Who in authority will protect our children from the potential avalanche of filth that our experience tells us comes with some cable channels?
In my view, neither advertising on cable nor legitimising the broadcast of 250 foreign cable channels into Jamaican households is this country's legitimate, cable television priority.
RESTRICTION, A MATTER
OF URGENCY
The protection of our children from harmful content is Jamaica's legitimate, compelling and urgent cable television priority.
As a matter of urgency, the state ought to focus on how to restrict lewd, obscene, perverted, sexually explicit, pornographic and violent cable content from entering Jamaican homes willy-nilly and require persons who wish to indulge in pornographic and explicitly violent material to seek these elsewhere.
Which brings me back to the necessary screens and commentary on the state's response to the wanton slaughter of our children.
In my view, the impunity with which men kill our children is unacceptable and the state's response is inadequate. Silence is an inadequate response. Lamen-tations of concern are inadequate responses.
Providing short-term psychiatric support to victimised families is an inadequate response. Passing empty laws is an inadequate response.
What therefore should the state do differently? Some suggest introducing capital punishment for those who murder our children.
I have never favoured capital punishment and have always opposed it on moral grounds. Furthermore, history shows that capital punishment is often used to harm poor, black families -- a state of affairs that no well meaning person could possibly support.
Yet, despite my long held opposition to capital punishment, I have come to realise that there are times in a nation's history when the state must unequivocally demonstrate to the society that it cares about its welfare.
TIME TO ACT
There are those times when the state is required to act decisively in the society's interest. The relentless slaughter of our children is one such time. The time has come for the state to act swiftly and decisively.
We know that if the legislature wants to make murder of our children a capital offence, the Jamaican Government has the power to do so. In the same way that the Government made killing a police officer a capital offence, it can also legislate that the killing of our children is a capital offence.
But I for one reject all empty laws. If we pass any law, the law must be enforced. So if the Government legislates that killing our children is a capital offence, the government is duty bound to enforce the law.
EMPTY LAW
It seems to me that in the past some laws were passed to end the argument. To use the Jamaican lingo, "Dem pass de law to done de argument." Laws on corruption and laws to protect children come to mind.
The slaughter of our children is too important to pass a law just to done the argument and to turn around and say, for example, the British Privy Council in England prevents us from acting on the law.
So I do not support the Govern-ment passing another empty law. If we pass the law to execute people who kill our children, we must execute those who are convicted of killing our children. And the justice system must ensure that those who are convicted are indeed guilty.
Moreover, justice must be swift and sure as it makes no sense to pass the law, catch and convict the criminal, pass the sentence and then have the criminal live out his natural life at taxpayer's expense or worse still, the criminal escapes the justice system and creates further mayhem in society.
So the time for dithering and hand wringing and pontificating is long past. We pass that long time. The time for action is now. Passing laws is never enough. Laws require enforcement. Enforcement requires that every man, woman and child demand that our government do what's right for our society and do it now. To do otherwise is to further imperil all of us.
Remarks by Kay Osborne,
general manager, Television Jamaica at the recent press launch of the Shanika Anderson Foundation's Benefit. Six-year-old Shanika was abducted from the Coronation Market on April 31, 2005. Her sodomised and sexually assaulted body was
discovered in Rae Town the next day.
