Fear of crime

I am writing in response to the headline in Saturday's Gleaner. 'Jamaica may suffer if the US lifts the Cuban embargo'. Let me say that the Cuban tourism industry has been very healthy with visitors from Canada the past several years. No doubt, the US market is much larger than ours. I have been to Jamaica 29 times, since 1976, and will continue to visit . The problem lies with your excessive crime rate that is deterring people to visit. I have many friends in this country that used to visit and are now going elsewhere. I have been advocating, on your behalf, for many years, for people to visit your beautiful country but people are getting frightened to go and it is only going to get worse.

- David R Stafford, david.stafford@cn.ca, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, Via Go-Jamaica

On culture

I am stunned and thoroughly enjoyed the article that Miss Carolyn Cooper wrote to The Sunday Gleaner of November 2. It was very funny, at first, but then I realised that it is very sad that the majority of our young men have degraded themselves in this way. I do not support homosexuality. However, our homophobic culture needs to stop affecting the progress of our young men. This article was very interesting and I would appreciate it if you could encourage more writers of Ms Cooper's calibre to submit articles about our culture to In Focus. I also enjoy Edward Seaga's articles. I know he is a very busy man, so it may not be possible for him to write every week, but the articles on culture are very very important.

- Excited Reader

Society of criminals

Quite often, I have read complaints by Jamaicans that the British cops were not effective because crime was not decreased. I think it is shameful that Jamaicans should expect foreigners to solve their problems with crime. All of us have choices. Just imagine a society sinks so low that they are slaughtering the children and women. They do not fear God. Does anyone think they are going to care about Mr Shields or anyone else? We produce a society of criminals and expect people to come from other countries to show us how to live like civilised people. Not even babies are safe. Human rights activists seem less active when a crime is committed than when crooks are caught.

- J. Elaine McDonald, Jmcdo62658@optonline.net, Via Go-Jamaica