McKenzie lambastes human rights groups

WESTERN BUREAU:

Human rights lobby groups came under fire from senior cabinet minister Desmond McKenzie who has rebuked their continuous criticism of the Government’s response to crime surges, and for their support of criminals who are murdering Jamaicans.

“Every time the government speaks about tackling crime using the measures [such as states of public emergency] that are legally there, that our security forces asked us to implement, they jump up like they are newborn virgins, untouched virgins talking about human rights,” said McKenzie, minister of local government and rural development.

“I want to ask some of these human rights so-called organisations, who as far as I am concerned have to keep themselves alive because they’re getting international funding … what about the rights of communities where persons can’t come out of their houses because they are under siege by criminals,” McKenzie said on Friday at a function in Westmoreland.

The minister has also accused the country’s human rights lobby groups of trampling on the rights of law-abiding Jamaicans in support of criminals and pushing the agenda of countries that are funding their operations.

“A lot of them have to get them salaries every month end, and if they don’t talk in the way that they do, people will say that them not doing the work,” McKenzie said.

To this end, the minister has launched a broadside against developed countries warning that the sovereign state of Jamaica is bigger than them.

SAY WHAT THEY WANT

“And they can say what they want to say about me because the only thing they can do to me is talk and take away my visa, having a visa is nothing. But they must realise that this country is bigger than them and the majority of the people in this country support the [crime-fighting] measures, once the measures are done in the right and proper way as people want a breath of fresh air,” said McKenzie.

While he has no problems with human rights lobby groups defending what they want, McKenzie is calling for a balancing act in the face of the turbulent times in which the country has found itself as it relates to the escalation of crimes.

“All of these persons support the various human rights bodies. Nobody can’t stop you from defending what you want and talking about, but level the playing field,” he said.

McKenzie argued that families whose loved ones have fallen at the hands of criminals are yet to see any form of compassion shown to them by human rights groups, instead he said those who have allegedly carried out these heinous crimes are being vigorously defended by human rights lobbyists.

“How many of them who are criticising measures put in by the government has reached out to families who have lost their lives ones by the hands of criminals who murder them? How many of them have created any form of counselling, for families who are under severe stress and pressure,” he questioned.

Continuing, a peeved McKenzie asked, “How many of these human rights groups know how some of the fatherless pickney, motherless pickney in this country go to school, how they survive on a daily basis?

“How many of them have gone into communities where the five-year died in Grange Hill, how many of them have gone into communities to give a sheet of zinc to residents whose houses are being firebombed because of the same criminals whose human rights they are protecting?”

At the same time, the minister said, he wants to know how human rights groups operating in this country feel when a foreign country has to caution their citizens to take extra care when planning vacations or business trips to Jamaica.

“I wonder how they feel as human rights groups to hear the Canadian government putting out an advisory, advising Canadians that when they come here they are to take care in coming to Jamaica. I wonder how they feel as human rights people,” McKenzie said.