Daniel Thwaites | A home-grown outrage

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column with a comparative analysis of police killings in the United States against police killings in Jamaica. Among the very interesting responses was one from Clifton Campbell asking me to make sure to mention the case of Noel Chambers, whose horrific history had been published in this newspaper.

Campbell reminded me of the case of Delroy McIntosh, whose story was told by The Gleaner in 2010, but who remained in prison till 2015, incarcerated for 25 years without trial on suspicion of possessing a ganja spliff. Since then, The Gleaner has highlighted the story of George Williams, who in 1970 was thrown behind bars, and who is still there. The 69-year-old hasn’t been to court in 48 years. These cases just scratch the surface.

Periodically, when the public expresses a little rage about this, those in charge promise to have a thorough review, to leave no stone unturned, to do justice, and to put to an end to this wickedness. Then, I imagine, some crisis or the other intervenes, some election is called, or perhaps, the promises were never sincere. Either way, those left to rot continue to rot.

So I wonder why The Gleaner didn’t publish the horrific photos of Mr Chambers? I imagine there are sensitivities regarding the family, but this is the kind of case that needs to be seared into the public mind. The images are gruesome, unforgettable. It is a naked corpse and I don’t imagine that we want it to be the regular practice that corpses should be on the front page. But this is a special case, because it was a corpse 40 years in the making at the pleasure of the Jamaican State. In our names and at our pleasure.

OVERWHELMED WITH IMAGES

You see, we’re overwhelmed with images nowadays, but they still sometimes have the capacity to shock us. For example, I’m thinking of the famous ‘Napalm girl’ photo, the nude nine-year-old running and screaming after being doused with chemicals in Vietnam. That shocked some consciences and contributed to ending the Vietnam War, or as they call it over there, the American War. Well, the images of naked Noel Chambers, food for vermin, could have just such a salutary impact.

The sad truth is that we have all become inured to seeing terrible things, and that’s because we deal with a lot of violence. There’s the civilian on civilian, gunman on gunman, gunman on civilian, gunman on police, police on civilian, police on gunman, etc. But as horrific as all these shockingly common killings are, we have the sense that those are largely in-the-moment-disasters. That and many of these horrors are produced by genuinely tough and bad people, intent on doing destruction.

The case of Noel Chambers and the others like him represent another kind of evil, and one that may be ultimately more troubling. It’s the long horizon of time through which he just sat in the prison system, nobody caring enough, knowledgeable enough, or sufficiently empowered, to get him out. It’s the fact that he had family who could and did petition for his release, and who would visit him, but who were voiceless to the authorities. Certainly they were never heard.

PAINFUL TO WATCH

The Gleaner’s excellent interview of the family is painful to watch, as you see immediately how not having the right money or the right links reduced them to inconsequential puppets to the system. And we see the slow grinding rumbling of a system that doesn’t care. Not unless you’re Kartel.

It is impossible to imagine that Chambers was at all times superintended and supervised by terrible people. They would have overseen him, done their day’s work, then gone home to have dinner with their families. And yet such a terrible wrong could fester, basically unnoticed.

The whole machinery of Jamaican justice just rolled by him. Now I’m not forgetting that he was accused of murdering a man. But had he been convicted of first degree murder, he would have been sentenced to 25 years and probably served far less. As it is, he finished his days unfree, emaciated, and being chewed up by bugs. That’s the best we were able to deliver.

Of course, the matter of accountability arises, and it stretches right up the ladder of the country’s establishment. Which is another way of saying there will be nothing done about it.

Consider that it wasn’t above our politicians to do their own little bit of race-baiting to gain some political traction when the matter of Britain’s offer to build the prison came up. Now there are barefaced denials that would be comical if the matter wasn’t so serious. All of a sudden it’s a mystery who rejected Britain’s offer. And all of a sudden everyone has amnesia about riling up the populace against the “ dyam facety an’ renk an’ houta horda white man dem who ah cum talk ‘bout buil’ prizzin”.

The net effect of all those magnificent remonstrations against accepting colonial pounds to build a decent prison is as follows: Noel Chambers and his like are left to feed a colony of rats because his supremely enlightened and thoroughly decolonialised leaders were more intent on shilling for political advantage on the pretext of lobbying for reparations and revenging historical insults and injuries. That interested them far more than in seeing to it that Chambers was housed, clothed, and fed a decent meal. And let’s not forget either that the government of the day crumpled like tin foil. This isn’t on Britain; it’s on us.

I hardly need to add that there should be firings and cascading resignations of everyone involved. And if there is no recognisable cause of action against the state for this kind of infamy, Parliament ought to create one right away. But that won’t happen because there’s no real political or any other price to pay for this entirely predictable, and even orchestrated, outrage.

- Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.