Bloody tale of two countries
Published:Sunday | August 21, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
It was the worst of times and, well, the worst of times in the tiny Caribbean country of St Kitts and Nevis and its bigger neighbour, Jamaica.
While Kittitians are seemingly overcome with fear as crime climbs inexorably, Jamaicans are viewing the Kittitian figures with some amount of wry amusement.
No one embraces death - neither Jamaicans nor Kittitians - but the context is so great in the two nations, it is hardly comprehensible on the face of the blood and barbarism.
Jamaica has a population of 2.7 million compared to 46,000 in St Kitts and Nevis.
The contrast brings to life the saying 'What is joke to you is death to me', as many Kittitians are reeling from the realisation that 26 murders committed in that island since the start of the year is one away from the record of 27.
While Jamaicans are accustomed to annual murder figures in the three- and four-digit ranges, the Kittitians are not.
Put into a per capita context, St Kitts and Nevis' murder rate is much higher than Jamaica's, despite the fact more than 700 persons have been murdered locally since the start of 2011.
In 2009, after a total of 23 killings recorded, St Kitts and Nevis was dubbed statistically, the murder capital of the world.
So while Kittitians are agitated, Jamaicans are grateful.
A 40 per cent dip in crime levels in Jamaica between 2009 and May 2011 has seen to this, notwithstanding the fact that criminals have found new ways to terrify Jamaicans with sharp-bladed instruments - decapitation and stabbing.
It is too early to do the math of murders in a country in which men, women and children may die in droves.
bittersweet decline
Case in point: 121 persons were murdered in Jamaica in January 2009. This figure jumped to 141 murders during the corresponding period of 2010, before dipping to 90 in 2011. Jamaicans are most grateful.
Take a look at the months of June of the past three years. A total of 123 persons were killed violently in 2009 compared to 98 in 2010 and 86 in 2011.
There is no Christopher 'Dudus' Coke extradition controversy or any Manatt, Phelps & Phillips saga in St Kitts that would have elicited calls for a state of emergency like that in Jamaica in 2010.
However, Kittitians - including the opposition - are now pressuring their political leaders to impose a state of emergency.
The St Kitts government says it has not ruled out such a measure.
As Jamaica, which last hanged a convict in 1988, reawakens the debate on capital punishment, records show that St Kitts and Nevis is the last English-speaking Caribbean nation to impose hanging. The punishment was carried out even as Amnesty International and other human rights groups descended on the Caribbean country in a bid to dissuade it.
Charles Elroy Laplace was hanged in Her Majesty's Prison, Basseterre, capital of St Kitts and Nevis, in December 2008.
St Kitts' Prime Minister Denzil Douglas seemed to have been undaunted as he warded off the onslaught of anti-capital punishment agitators, but since then, others on death row have not laid eyes on the rope of death.
A new police commissioner tackles the challenges in St Kitts and Nevis even as the outgoing commissioner's son is a victim of what is regarded as wanton and rampant killings in the tiny sovereign twin-island Caribbean state.