Public Affairs - Must we all yield our ground?

Claude Clarke, Contributor

TRAYVON MARTIN may have been as innocent as an angel. The Skittles and iced tea he carried were as harmless as the night's dew. The right of a man with a gun to pursue and shoot him dead was deemed greater than a young boy's right to live. The unmistakable message sent forth was: the mighty, no matter how wrong, are entitled to stand their ground, the weak, even where right, must yield. This is the state of injustice with which the weak in the state of Florida must contend today.

Here in Jamaica, though, to yield your ground is not enough. Even to flee or to hide does not assure the citizen the right to his life when he is confronted by the might of the state. Keith Clarke, my brother, not only yielded ground in his own home. He retreated. He fled. He hid in the most remote crevice of his bedroom, the closet, and yet was pursued and his body pierced through the back with 22 warheads from the high-powered weapons of agents of the Jamaican state. Yet, unlike George Zimmerman, those who directed the mission that led to that brutal act have contemptuously refused to account for their actions.

Yes, three low-ranking soldiers have been asked to answer for his murder. This is fully justified as ultimately it is they who fired the fatal shots. But they did not order themselves to leave their barracks and transport themselves to Kirkland Close. They did not provide themselves with the high-powered weapons with which they were armed. They did not provide the sophisticated steel cutters and battering rams that were used to break into Keith's home and bedroom. And it is not they who bear the constitutional responsibility for the invasion of a citizen's home in the dead of night. They operated under the command of high-ranking military officers who mounted a mission with official sanction.

Accountability

But more than three years later, no one in that chain of command, from the officers on site to the minister of defence, under whose authority the decisions were made to sanction and execute the action that led to the assault on Keith Clarke's home and his savage, unwarranted killing has been made to account. Efforts by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), the agency appointed by the people through Parliament to ensure that the constitutional and human rights of their fellow citizens are not abused, have been rebuffed and ignored by those with the duty and responsibility to account for what happened. No one has seen fit to tell the public why scores of soldiers, armed to the teeth and supported by air power and floodlights, attacked the home of a law-abiding citizen as he and his family lay in their beds.

As I have said many times before, a major reason for Jamaica's failure to advance socially and economically is our propensity to not only excuse official failure but to reward it. There have been numerous instances of persons who have manifestly failed to discharge the responsibilities of their office being promoted to even higher office. The latest, and to my mind most egregious of these occurrences, is the appointment of the head of the military force that was responsible for abusing the rights of scores of Jamaican citizens to the offices of permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security and executive member of the Defence Board, the body that oversees that very same military force.

Chief of Defence Staff, Major General Stewart Saunders, sat comfortably atop the force that disrupted and destroyed the lives of dozens of Jamaican families. And men operating under his command, without regard for law or human rights, breached the security of Keith Clarke's home, terrorised him and his family and killed him. Neither the major general nor his successor has seen fit to tell the Jamaican parliament, the Jamaican people or Keith's family why they took his life. Nor has the former minister of defence, Bruce Golding, or his successor asserted their authority and honoured their duty to the Jamaican people by demanding that the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) tell Parliament's Independent Commission of Investigations what caused them to infringe a citizen's right to the protection and safety of his home and his life.

In the face of such brazen unaccountability on his part as head of the military, Major General Saunders' appointment to the powerful position of Secretary of the Defence Board is a disrespectful slap in the face of the Jamaican people. How could one who so recently presided over operations so rife with human-rights abuses be allowed to retire honourably and be promoted without answering to the public for these abuses?

Unholy intelligence cock-up?

Is the reason the military so stubbornly refuses to reveal the basis on which they attacked Keith's home, the embarrassment that would result from the revelation that the raid was the result of an unholy intelligence cock-up? Is it that they cannot bear the likely conclusion that the military, which consumes so much of the country's resources, has little more than the blood of our own people to show for it?

The tragedy at Tivoli, which snuffed out more than 70 Jamaican lives, will require a lot to be fully unravelled; and the commission of enquiry recommended by the public defender may be the best course through which the public will be able to understand all that took place. However, the case of Keith Clarke's killing is discretely separate and lends itself to a clean clinical investigation that could expose much of what is wrong with Jamaica's treatment of the rights of its citizens, and the discordant relationship between the Government and the governed, the weak and the strong.

The two lance corporals and a private of the JDF, trained to obey orders without question, are properly being asked to account for the fatal consequences of their actions. But that will not reveal the truth about the motive, the planning and the execution of the deadly mission to Kirkland Close.

Those who are in a position to do so must tell us why the many calls made from Keith Clarke's home and from his neighbours to the police 119 emergency number, begging for help to be sent to repel what they up to then assumed was an attack by non-state criminals, were not acted on.

The greatest hope of Keith's family after their frightening ordeal that fatal night in May, is that the investigations and judicial process will lead to a clear message to all in our country: human life is sacred. It must be respected. Every one of our citizens has to be entitled to safety within the sanctuary of their home. There, one should never be required to yield one's ground to anyone; not even agents of the state.

The message of open season on America's black youth delivered by the George Zimmerman verdict is far less threatening to the freedom of the children of black people in America than is the declaration made by the killing of Keith Clarke, that the Jamaican government is free to kill and maim its citizens at will, even in their own homes, whether or not they yield their ground.

Constitutional government in a democracy, which we presume exists in Jamaica, is founded on the principle that all power resides with the people. And the people conditionally delegate that power to representatives they send to Parliament.

Explain the JDF's actions

However, the effectiveness of our democracy can only be assured if entities that flout the people's authority are made to answer to their representatives. The JDF's blatant contempt for legitimate questions about their mission to Kirkland Close by Parliament's commission, INDECOM, requires that Parliament itself demand answers from the Defence Board that it empowered through the Defence Act "to be responsible for the command, discipline and administration of, and all other matters relating to, the Jamaica Defence Force". The board's chairman, the prime minister, must be asked to explain the JDF's actions that led to the killing of a citizen, whose only crime was to be foolish enough to believe that the security forces were there to protect him from criminals. Is there one member of our parliament with the cajones to move such a motion?

For if the actions of the JDF during those fateful days in May three years ago are not exposed to the judgement of the people, it will tell us that the democracy we practise here is no more than government of the powerful, by the powerful and for the powerful: leaving us as a people at the mercy of an army of George Zimmermans.

Claude Clarke is a businessman and former minister of industry. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.