Peter Espeut TOMORROW WILL be one year since the police shot to death seven young men and boys in Braeton, south St. Catherine. I will always remember the exact date because it falls on my wife's birthday.
I am board chairman of a church-school just up the road from the death house, and I will never forget the anxiety in the voice of the principal who called me early that morning to ask if we could close the school for the day, since the area was swarming with policemen and reporters, and many parents had not taken their children.
A few days later at the church, I assisted my pastor, Fr. Walter Dorsey, to bury three of the seven. There was no official presence at the funeral which might be taken as a hint of sympathy or regret no policeman, no PNP or JLP politician, no wider church; only human-rights activists.
As I looked in the coffins at their battered and bruised faces unsuccessfully covered up by the funeral parlour, and at the tam and dark glasses which partially covered the damaged head of Chris, I asked myself: "Why did it have to come to this?" I don't know if any of them were criminals and murderers; only a court should decide that; but they were my brothers washed in the same waters of baptism as I am, citizens of the same country as I am, members of the same human race as I am. Did they not deserve a chance to speak for themselves, to plead guilt or innocence, to work out their salvation in fear and trembling?
The manner of the deaths of the seven has split the country in two: those who support the actions of the police, and those who feel their action was excessive. Looking back over the year I am surprised at the number of otherwise sensible people - many of them churchgoers and ministers of religion - who have vociferously defended the right of the police to shoot down anyone they suspect of criminal behaviour.
I am finding it difficult to understand how so-called followers of Jesus in this so-called Christian country the same Jesus who refused to support the execution by stoning of the woman caught in the act of adultery - could rejoice at the manner of the deaths of these boys. But then, many of these same people will stone goat-thieves to death, or rejoice at the result; so I suppose I should not be surprised. We need to work for the conversion of the hearts of many of those inside our churches, never mind those outside!
Jamaica used to be a country where everyone was not equal under the law. A small minority had tremendous privileges and rights which the police and the courts were careful to protect, while the vast majority of Jamaicans did not count for much.
Times have changed, and our laws have changed, and the colour of the faces of those in authority has changed, but it seems to me that the situation has not much changed. Jamaica has the highest rate of police killings in the world, but there is a social and ethnic sameness about their victims. Some suspects rate a trial, and others clearly do not.
I have not heard any senior public official condemn police brutality, or admonish the security forces to respect the rights of the citizens, voters or taxpayers of this country. However, I have heard a JLP Prime Minister tell the police not to recite beatitudes to criminals, and I have heard a PNP Minister of Natural Security and Justice state that anyone who draws a gun on the police deserves to end up in the morgue. Don't we get the message that if the rights of one group in society are being infringed, we could be next? Frankly, I am more than a little surprised at the chorus of support for the "instant execution" approach of the police from people who quite closely resemble the victims of police brutality; while the few who condemn police killings largely resemble the segment of society usually exempt from such treatment. Don't you find this ironic?
Both my wife and I are former high-school teachers who took our jobs seriously. On our way home from the Braeton funeral we lamented at how these boys and so many others had fallen through the cracks in our education system. With taxpayers' money, the Jamaican government supports high-quality education for a minority (such as I received at Campion College in the 1960s) and lower-quality education for the majority (such as those I had just seen lying in the coffins in Braeton).
Do you see any connection? The number of failures and dropouts is a portent of unrealised human potential and missed opportunity. One reason Jamaica is under-producing and under-achieving is that we are wasting our human capital at an alarming rate. This failure must not be laid only at the feet of teachers and the Ministry of Education, but also squarely at the feet of families and of the private sector and of the Church.
We can ignore local and international human rights activists, and pretend that everything is normal and OK; and do a better cover-up job than the undertakers did at the Braeton funeral, and make sure that no policeman suffers when he performs an extra-judicial killing. But notice: Jamaica is developing an international reputation as a country which does not respect the human rights of its citizens, and where the link between politics, drugs and guns is out of control.
Regretfully, we deserve that reputation. When the sanctions come, we should not bawl!
The Rev. Peter Espeut is a Deacon of the Roman Catholic Church assigned to the Church of the Good Shepherd, Braeton, South St. Catherine.
