Editorial | Humans rights important beyond US sanctions

The timing of America’s public designation of retired senior police officer Reneto Adams, and five members of his long-disbanded Crime Management Unit (CMU), is a bit curious. And it would have carried far more weight if it had been done under a presidency other than Donald Trump’s in its waning days.

But no matter who the messenger is, this development ought to be a reminder of the primacy of human rights in a liberal democracy, a commitment which requires more than pious declarations of support by leaders. Human rights come with a sacred obligation of the State to their protection, especially from abuse or infringement by its actors. Given the specific development, it would be appropriate if the Holness administration reconsiders its change of mind about updating the law to give specific powers of arrest and prosecution to the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), the agency that investigates complaints against the security forces.

Reneto Adams, a former senior superintendent of police who retired a dozen years ago, is a controversial figure who still inspires adulation and derision in almost equal measure for his sort of action figure-style approach to crime-fighting, what Jamaicans call hard policing. In late 2000, in the face of a sharp spike in violent crime, Mr Adams was named to lead the newly created CMU. His notoriety soon soared. The CMU became involved in a raft of confrontations with alleged criminal gunmen.

COMPLAINTS LINGER

For instance, there was a July 2001 incident in the west Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens, in which 29 civilians, including a policeman and a soldier, were killed – an event triggered by a CMU operation ostensibly in search of guns and drugs. Although a commission of inquiry exonerated the security forces of the claim of “indiscriminate use of violence – a characterisation of state terrorism”, such complaints linger against Mr Adams and his team.

A few months before the Tivoli Gardens incident, in-between other controversial missions, the CMU was involved in another hotly disputed operation in which seven young men, who became known as the Braeton Seven, were killed in a small house in Braeton, St Catherine. Months later, Mr Adams and his team were again accused of extrajudicial killings when four people died in Kraal, Clarendon. Mr Adams and five members of the CMU were tried for murder and acquitted.

Three things are notable about last week’s invocation by America’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, which gives him the power to place visa restrictions on individuals – and their close family – who are deemed to “have been involved, directly or indirectly, in significant corruption, including corruption related to the extraction of natural resources, or a gross violation of human rights”.

First, the State Department’s website, in announcing the sanctions, heads the declaration with the name of Devon Orlando Bernard and lists Mr Adams among five members of Bernard’s unit, who were also designated for their “involvement in the extrajudicial killings”. It is surprising that the State Department, with all the resources of the United States government, would so seriously err on who was head of the CMU, unless the Americans were sending a signal about the functioning, or inner workings, of the unit, of which Jamaicans were, hitherto, unaware. It is unlikely that Jamaica’s Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith was not apprised of the US plans for the designations against Mr Adams et al, before they were announced, during her recent talks on bilateral affairs, including security, with the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale. It would be useful if Mrs Johnson Smith sheds light on the matter.

Second, this move comes a decade and a half after Mr Adams and his colleagues were acquitted in the Kraal case, which makes the timing curious. Third, in the aftermath of the acquittal, it came to light that the US visas of those who were tried, including Mr Adams’, were revoked. This raises the question of whether last week’s action was merely symbolic, or that there was other information about the CMU, or the targeted individuals, about which the public should be aware.

HEAVY MORAL WEIGHT

Beyond the fact that a US visa is a cherished possession of most Jamaicans, and the potentially serious economic inconvenience of being under US sanctions, an action by the United States, such as last week’s, would normally carry heavy moral weight. That, though, has been lightened by Mr Trump’s blatant corruption of US institutions and his diminution of America’s moral authority globally, through Washington’s selective outrage over human-rights abuses and the president’s readiness to embrace some of the worst offenders.

Happily, Jamaica, and the world, will soon move past Mr Trump. That, however, does not lessen this country’s need to put its house in order. Mr Adams and the CMU, notably, were before INDECOM, when the police investigated themselves and there was little chance that cases against the security forces could survive the rigours of court hearings.

Things have improved, but the culture of impunity changes slowly. Trust in the prosecutorial system to aggressively advance cases is weak. The courts have held that INDECOM investigative authority did not come with prosecutorial powers, which the Government promised to put right, before it changed its mind. That was a bad decision which should be reversed. At the same time, we sense that INDECOM’s energy may be waning. That must not be allowed to happen.