By Garwin Davis, Assistant News EditorMANY JAMAICANS say they are wary of travelling to both the United States and Great Britain, claiming customs and immigration officials were targeting them because of their nationality.
They said the problem was further exacerbated when they travel on the national airline, Air Jamaica, saying it carried the stigma of being a drug carrier.
"It is very bad and can also be a very humiliating experience," charges Kiron Chatani, a prominent Ocho Rios businesswoman. "The feeling among some of these officers, and I can only speak about those stationed at the US airports, is that most Jamaicans are either drug dealers or are involved in some form of racketeering."
Ms. Chatani, a director of the Taj Mahal Plaza and owner of Krazy Nancy Department Store, said she was tired of being "singled out" on trips to the US, believing it has to do solely with the fact that she is Jamaican.
"They will place you into these little cubicles for hours," she said. "They will search you and ask you these stupid questions. ... If it was an across the board thing I could see but it's always the Jamaicans who are being targeted," she said.
Her brother Sanju, a businessman, agreed. "I am always being asked to take off my shoes and taken into isolated areas by customs officers," he said. "Many Jamaican travellers I speak with have had similar experiences."
Both US and British officials have maintained there was no plan to target Jamaican travellers. They insisted that their only motivation was to cut off the widespread flow of drugs entering their countries.
Despite the rhetoric from both countries, however, there appears to be merit to the complaints.
Last week, Air Jamaica officials hastily called a press conference to challenge a story captioned, "On Board with Cocaine Air", that was published in the popular British tabloid, The Mirror. The story singled out the airline as a major carrier of 'drug mules' and blamed Jamaica for a lot of the drug problems and gang violence in Great Britain.
"That story was a disgrace to us as a nation," charged Christopher Zacca, chief executive officer and president of Air Jamaica. "The article was purely aimed at destroying the reputation of Air Jamaica and also that of the country and I am curious why it should come at this time." Mr. Zacca also took issue with the airline being referred to as "Cocaine Air."
The writer of the Mirror article, Jeff Edwards, while defending his story during interviews with sections of the local media last week, said he did not write the story's headline and attributed the phrase to what he said was a popular saying among customs and immigration officials in Britain.
For Trelawny businessman Rupert Campbell, Mr. Edwards' claim about the UK officials was the source of the problem. "If you have customs and immigration officials making those derogatory comments about the national airline, how else do you expect them to treat Jamaicans?" he asked.
"They believe we are all drug dealers and on arrival in England many of us are treated that way. Our Government has to take a stance because this is the equivalent of racial profiling. I have been through so many embarrassing experiences at Heathrow airport. I have been strip-searched and, on several occasions, custom officers have threatened to take me to the hospital to check if I had swallowed drugs."
Sandra Roberts (not her real name), a teacher from St. Mary, was not so fortunate. According to her, customs officers forcibly took her to the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami because she had refused to sign a form volunteering to do an X-ray for drugs.
"I was handcuffed and placed in a waiting area for what seemed like hours," she said. "When I wanted to use the bathroom I was accompanied by a female officer who watched my every move. I was later taken to the hospital where the X-ray proved negative. ... They then apologised. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I thought about suing but was told that they reserved the right to do that if they suspect somebody of trafficking drugs."
Trevor Phillips, Deputy Chairman of the Greater London Assembly, while agreeing that the problem of drug smuggling was serious and had to be addressed, believed there was a danger of custom officials exaggerating the issue. In an interview with a British newspaper, Mr. Phillips said "perfectly innocent Jamaicans who are coming over to visit their families and, moreso you know, holiday-makers and businesspeople, will find that this is going to be used as an excuse to harass them, to hinder them, to hold them up at airports."
He said "there is a great danger that now, what we are going to get is, rather than a concentrated united effort to deal with the issue of drugs, we are going to get into an argument about whether Jamaicans are more likely to carry drugs than anybody else. And it will become a different sort of argument, which I frankly think we don't need at this time."
