Editorial | Bounty after Shanique Myrie

Predictably, some anti-CCJ campaigners latched onto last week’s immigration problems in Port of Spain by the dancehall DJ, Rodney Price, as a case against Jamaica’s recommended accession to the civil and criminal jurisdictions of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

They have conflated Mr Price’s difficulties – the specific nature of which remains unclear – with the need for a visa to enter Greater Britain, the home of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), which continues to be Jamaica’s apex court. The issues, and the circumstances relative thereto, are not the same.

To enter Greater Britain, whether to attend a hearing of the Privy Council, or for any other reason, a Jamaican first has to obtain a costly pre-entry visa. That can be denied for a whole host of reasons, including the whim of a consular officer who might be having a bad day.

However, as was established in the Shanique Myrie case in 2013, a Jamaican citizen, and for that matter any citizen of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), has a presumptive right of entry to Trinidad and Tobago, which can be infringed in only very limited circumstances.

Indeed, the right and its contingent obligations are to be adhered to by all signatories of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC), the agreement that established CARICOM in its current form as a burgeoning single market and economy.

Regarding the debate over which should be Jamaica’s final court, this newspaper supports accession to the CCJ, in which the island already participates in its original jurisdiction as the interpreter as the RTC.

By joining the CCJ’s civil and criminal divisions, allied with removing King Charles III as the island’s head of state, Jamaica would complete the break of its centuries-old colonial relationship with the UK. Very critically, too, the move would open access to a broader range of Jamaicans to the top tier of their justice system, from which they are now far removed.

COMMUNITY LAW

Just being able, without hassle, to physically attend a hearing of the CCJ is a right the court underlined, tangentially, in its Shanique Myrie ruling that expanded community law.

Ms Myrie was a young Jamaican in March 2011 when she made her first trip out of the island to Barbados. Suspected of drug trafficking, she endured an unsanitary body cavity search; faced slurs on nationality; had her entry permit rescinded; and after a night in an airport lock-up, deported to her home country.

Ms Myrie took the matter to the CCJ in its original jurisdiction, arguing that her expectations of, and rights to, hassle-free movement in the community as a CARICOM citizen was infringed. The court agreed.

Ms Myrie’s lawyers based their case on Article 45 of the Revised Treaty, in which CARICOM states committed themselves “to the goal of free movement of their nationals within the Community” and a 2007 decision by a CARICOM Heads of Government Conference, the highest decision-making body, that “all CARICOM nationals should be entitled to an automatic stay of six months upon arrival in order to enhance their sense that they belong to, and can move in the Caribbean Community, subject to the rights of member states to refuse undesirable persons entry and to prevent persons from becoming a charge on public funds”.

The CCJ held that these amounted to community law, and argued that the right to refuse entry must be construed as “an exception to a fundamental principle of free movement”.

“... The scope of the refusal and, in particular, the grounds on which it is based must be interpreted narrowly and strictly in order to avoid an unjustified watering down of the importance of the right it seeks to limit,” the court argued.

“Secondly, being an exception to this fundamental principle, the burden of proof must rest on the member state that seeks to invoke either ground for refusing entry.”

ORDINARY FOLK

In the event, any CARICOM citizen who is denied entry into a member state must be given the reason in writing, and should be allowed, the CCJ held, “the opportunity to consult an attorney or a consular official of their country, if available, or in any event to contact a family member”.

None of this was afforded to Ms Myrie.

Last week, however, those procedures were apparently available to Mr Price, who is better known by his stage name Bounty Killer.

In 2008, when he was still a highly controversial figure because of his alleged violent, confrontational and misogynistic lyrics, Mr Price was denied entry to perform in Trinidad and Tobago.

But last week, days after he, at home, received national recognition for his contribution to Jamaican culture, Mr Price praised Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the transport, energy and technology minister, Daryl Vaz, for helping to resolve his issues in Port of Spain.

That intervention by high-level government officials was no doubt helpful. But ordinary folk without those connections would count on the law in insisting on their right of entry.