Stephen VasciannieA CRAFTY campaign has been mounted by persons in Jamaica who attach very little importance to human rights in our society. At the heart of the campaign is the idea that human rights bodies both within, and outside Jamaica are insincere in their advocacy of the right to life and related matters, and that therefore we should ignore their pronouncements, coming as they do from misguided, anti-government souls.
Although the campaign has reached its high-water mark as a result of the Braeton killings, it has long been a part of our skewed intellectual framework in Jamaica. Consider the plight of the Jamaica Council for Human Rights and its successor organisation the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights.
Have we not heard, ad nauseam, that the Council is not concerned with victims, and that it spends almost all of its time defending persons on death row?
Persons who put forward this criticism of the Council seem to believe that once a person is accused of murder, he should be carted off to the gallows without any serious thought given to due process. And, therefore, the Council's work is severely underrated, and even vilified with the critics not stopping to think that one day they may be wrongfully accused.
The senior members of the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights are committed to the abolition of the death penalty, and this, in a society where the murder rate has averaged 930 per annum in the past five years, is perceived by many as an unrealistic stance. Hence, I would imagine that it would not be exceedingly difficult to marginalise the IJCHR, and if, by their tenacity they refuse to be marginalised, then to starve them of funding.
But what then can the rights critics say about Jamaicans for Justice? As I understand it, Jamaicans for Justice is not opposed to the death penalty in appropriate cases, and it cannot reasonably be said that this grouping is preoccupied with death row inmates: indeed, the matters that have received most attention by Jamaicans for Justice, the despicable Michael Gayle murder by the security forces, and the Montego Bay Street People Inquiry, clearly fall within the category of incidents that should shock the conscience of well-thinking members of society.
So, it is not so easy to undermine Jamaicans for Justice with the death penalty question. Instead, the anti-human rights critics have pointed to the middle-class background of the leadership of the grouping, and have suggested that Jamaicans for Justice has political, anti-government motives. Of course, these criticisms are easy to hit down, and one notices that they are rarely put forward by leading members of the government.
For one thing, what is wrong with the fact that some members of Jamaicans for Justice are from the middle-class? It may be that their background and in particular their access to good quality education has well-equipped them to tackle the organisational challenges of establishing a human rights body in the face of social hostility.
For another, some leaders of Jamaicans for Justice have repeatedly emphasised the broad-based nature of the organisation. It may have started among the middle-class, but now it embraces membership from all sectors. Yet, the middle-class tag is being advanced by people who should know better: in the midst of the Braeton episode, Simon Croskill and Neville Bell interviewed Carolyn Gomes on television, and spent much of their time raising questions about the class background of Jamaicans for Justice (and other perceived 'problems' of the organisation), and failed to ask any serious questions about why seven men were killed in Braeton.
As to the political criticism, Jamaicans for Justice has been able to establish that its membership is drawn from all political parties, and no party at all. Some time last year, a senior member of the Police Federation tried to fly that kite, but his position was firmly refuted.
Similarly, the new organisation, Families Against State Terrorism (FAST) has already come in for questioning. FAST is accused of being unduly inquisitive, and its perfectly reasonable position, that witnesses should not give statements without their attorneys present, is being portrayed as unwarranted intervention in the legal process. If the critics can't hit you with one thing, they try another.
Errors in the text
All of this goes to show, however, that the anti-rights campaigners have sought to place human rights organisations on the defensive, when, in fact, their time would be better spent attacking State abuses. This situation has come home most clearly in respect of the reactions of various persons to Amnesty International's two recent reports concerning Jamaica.
One of the Amnesty Reports, entitled Killings and Violence by Police: How Many More Victims, seeks to provide an overview of "serious and systematic human rights violations at the hands of the police and other members of the security forces" in Jamaica, including "the use of excessive lethal force, extra-judicial executions; and torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment".
This report has been subject to criticism by the Government and the Commissioner of Police on the basis that Amnesty did not give the authorities any time to react, before they published it. It is also said that this report contains certain errors. Assume that the authorities are right, then what we should do is seek to correct the errors in the text. But, we should also pay attention to the central question whether the main force of the report is correct, and what can be done to rectify a situation in which over the past five years the police have killed on average over 146 Jamaicans.
As to Amnesty's second report, The Braeton Seven: Report on the Observation of Seven Autopsies in Jamaica March 29, 2001, there is a stony silence on the part of the authorities. Remember the Commissioner was quick off the mark to explain that the police in Braeton had acted in self-defence, and Senior Superintendent Adams was keen to put forward his self-defence position on the radio from around 7 a.m. on the morning of the shooting. So, they have opened the door, setting out their version of the events.
But, the Amnesty report condemns them. Here is what it says in part:
"Six of the seven deceased had received lethal gunshot wounds to the head (no 1 to 6) and three had also received potentially lethal gunshot wounds to the chest or abdomen (1,2,4). One person (no 7) had received lethal gun shot wounds in the chest and the abdomen. Four of the seven deceased (2,4,5,7) were shot from behind, no 2 and 4 had also some shots that came from the anterior side. Of the six deceased who received lethal shots towards the head these came from behind in case no 2, 4 and 5, no 4 also having received some lethal shots from the front. No 1 and 3 were hit by the lethal shots in the left side of the head, and no 6 in the right side of the head. No 7, who had no head wounds, was hit from behind.
Two of the head shots in case no 3 had the appearance of contact wounds. All the other shots were fired from a distance longer than the links of the barrel of the weapon."
This is where we should place our attention. Forget the foolish rhetoric of those who are trying to undermine Amnesty and our local human rights bodies. Watch the ball: we cannot have a police force that is answerable to no one, even in the face of the damning Amnesty report concerning Braeton.
Stephen Vasciannie, an attorney-at-law, teaches at the University of the West Indies.
