Back to business as usual

Dawn Ritch, Contributor

APPARENTLY a bank robbery was in progress in Tivoli Gardens last weekend.

Only that could require soldiers and policemen to take up sniper positions in the tops of buildings. From that vantage point it's easy to spot the criminals, because they're the ones running off with the bags of money, or firing back at the bank.

No badly out-of-control bank robbery was going on in Tivoli, however, yet over 24 people died there in two days, including three members of the military and Police Force.

The unprecedented slaughter made headlines around the world.

This Government has no regard whatsoever for the rights of poor people, and I am outraged and disgusted by its conduct over the last several days. Up to Monday morning Senator Maxine Henry Wilson was pouring scorn and ridicule upon the idea that over 20 slaughtered was by then the count. Not until Tuesday evening did the police confirm to the country that this was indeed the utterly horrifying truth.

On Saturday night the television news carried a clip of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams saying into the camera "Jamaica will pay dearly, pay dearly, pay dearly (for this day in Tivoli)..." Did the crime fighter feel personally thwarted or something, while he sat there in sniper position at the Coronation Market Police Command Post? Or was he just having a nervous breakdown before our very eyes? I did not think that he was talking about tourism numbers, or commercial loss of revenue.

Remove Adams

At the time he could not have known that Jamaica would in response lock down for the next three days. Besides, Reneto Adams is no economist. When he said "pay dearly," he meant not with our cheque books. And I take the dimmest view possible of such statements coming from an officer of the law. Wholeheartedly therefore, I support Opposition Leader Edward Seaga's call to remove Snr. Supt. Adams from front line police duty.

The two-day assault he led on alleged gunmen in Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town has left behind shockingly unacceptable levels of fatalities. The siege of these communities by the security forces continued until midday Wednesday, but the private sector went back to work on Wednesday morning. These number crunchers seem not to understand that very poor communities have no numbers to crunch except their bodies. It is of little importance to them whether or not tourists come to Jamaica. Whether they do or whether they don't, nothing changes for poor people.

They still have to go on the street every day to buy their food because they have no storage at home. To force them to stay in their homes for four days is cruel and unusual punishment. The police have a right to search, and poor people also have a right to come out of their homes whenever the spirit moves them. This was denied to thousands of Jamaicans for several days last week. So when people living elsewhere in Jamaica complained about wanting to, and being unable to go about their lawful business on Monday and Tuesday, I had no sympathy whatsoever for the sentiment.

If the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) really meant to be effective, they should have called upon their members islandwide to remain at home until the security forces withdrew from the affected communities. To my mind the only group which should have gone in on Tuesday was the church. Bishop Herro Blair of the Deliverance Centre is therefore to be heartily congratulated. At 2:20 p.m. on Monday he called Wilmot Perkins's radio programme and announced that if the soldiers did not withdraw in 24 hours, he would lead evangelicals in with food and medicine. And he did - to their obvious and immense relief.

The private sector, by touring the affected communities hours before this occurred, has merely lent its enormous prestige to an exercise papering over the cracks.

PR move

I think that Peter Moses, president of PSOJ, realises this. He said on site that if Tivoli were calmed down, he felt the rest of Jamaica would calm down too. He was right, and it did. But it was nevertheless a mere public relations gesture. The issue in Tivoli however, is a practical issue of survival and hope for opportunity that never seems to come. Instead what happened was the most baleful subjugation of human beings the country has ever witnessed since the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865, followed by overseas reports on the tragedy and the "notoriousness" of the residents of Tivoli Gardens.

Where may I ask, was the Public Defender in all of this? Is he still on about AIDS and raising inner-city investment? Or was he at any police station trying to help the over 100 people detained while trying to flee the violence in the area? Had he been at a police station, Howard Hamilton would doubtless have been on national television at some point over the ensuing days. But he was not. So I don't know what he thinks his role as Public Defender means, but it certainly isn't defending the public, while the corpses of some of its members lie bloating on Jamaican streets. This is only a temporary truce because the majority of Jamaicans don't care about poor black people. As long as shops can open and the Government can collect its GCT, all is well in Jamaica.

But all is not well. Until the PSOJ stands up for the rights of poor people in this country regardless of where they live, nothing will be well. The poor will not care about your properties and your businesses, and sporadic outbreaks each more serious than the last, can only follow.

The time for hypocrisy has surely ended. Yet there it is ­ the PSOJ with national prestige, yet really doing nothing so far as anyone can tell. Why should the poor then care about what happens to business or tourism? No wonder the country keeps erupting. Let the record show, however, that after two days things always return to business as usual. Jamaicans make the worst revolutionaries in the world.

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