Ronald Thwaites | Tek sleep mark death

Comparing the turmoil of Haiti, the shortages in Cuba, the contradictions of US society, and the ingratitude of the UK, there was I relishing how sweet life is in Jamaica. That is if you have a few shillings and know how the runnings go. Then last week, Lieutenant General Rocky Meade bared his soul and that of the Government. He says we have so much loss of life to crime because we are reluctant to ‘temporarily’ surrender (to their discretion, of course!) unspecified elements of our constitutional rights.

As if we have not done that already, and permanently, from Gun Court and Suppression of Crime days. Now they want to take it further. Preventive detention, locking you up on a policeman ‘s whim with no access to court, is what he and they now propose in their bankruptcy about how to curb murder.

Take sleep and mark death. The right to life is indeed primary and sacred. But the juxtaposition that trades off fundamental rights as the way we save lives is false, repugnant and futile. What safety do we have when the head of the army invites us to repudiate the very Constitution that he swore to uphold?

“He has the Gatling guns and we have none.” A slight paraphrase of Belloc’s smug Anglo-Saxon superiority – applicable here, too, in our neocolonial muddle.

AFFIRMING RELIANCE ON THE QUEEN

These illiberal sentiments are tantamount to a declaration of failure of the Government’s national security policies – just as the Suppression of Crime Act was two generations ago. Not one arrest, let alone conviction, of those who get thousands of guns and tons of ammunition into the country with increasing impunity. No more mention of the hordes of gang leaders who we were told have been jailed. Trial dates of those rarely charged are being set three years hence, yet Delroy proclaims prosperity. The number of active gangs goes up, not down, every time the minister speaks. Successful crime-fighting is described in terms of humans “disposed of”.

Violent crime is plotted and masterminded from within prison, and Vybz continues his career and has more airtime on international media than Andrew Holness. Ironically, and grotesquely, both are affirming their reliance on Queen Elizabeth: Brogad for his Privy Council status and the ‘World Boss’ for his hope of vindication!

(Incidentally, where else in the world would a head of government’s address on a major national crisis be interrupted to take advertisements for gambling and phone credit? No matter how rambling and boring it was, can it justify that disrespect? The incident graphically displays the society’s priorities.)

So what dem a seh? That the only way to solve crime is for the rest of us to agree to the suspension (read termination) of our rights and freedoms?

Then there is the frightening silence (acquiescence?) by the supposed chief guardians of our rights – the governor general, prime minister, Minister of national security, not to even bother mention the attorney general. We are left to believe that they agree with him. Why else were they not the first to repudiate the sentiment that “if we insist on all our rights, we may not be alive to enjoy them”?

Watch for what is coming down the legislative pike. Who was it who spoke about needing states of emergency for seven years?

Take sleep and mark death. The day could come when this newspaper column, your tweet or Facebook post, that church sermon or the other political affiliation would be considered inimical to their perception of national good, and so be banned and people put in jail without recourse to the courts. Remember when it was proposed that certain “acts and utterances” be criminalised?

Detention without effective recourse is already the reality for large numbers of our people. Unfettered, it can be used again against anyone the powerful choose to consider suspect.

Pearnel, where are you? Isn’t this the very iniquity that Babsy and you complain of? Who wrote the book Detained?

The ‘general of detention without charge’ says that the suspension of rights will be “temporary.” Who will determine that, please? Unno same one who repudiated the freedoms in the first instance, close your eyes to the underlying causes of crime, want to preserve your reputation and political power?

Bruce, respectable champion of the Charter of Rights, how does Rocky Meade’s proposal square with the fundamentals of a “free and democratic society”? We need to hear from you, please.

Protecting “the right to life” was Eyre’s pretext for the Morant Bay massacre. It justified the savage put-down of every slave rebellion and the cruel narrative of systemic repression, embedded inequality, and police and soldier abuse in our history.

A dat all a unno defend?

VOICES OF OBJECTION

Where are the voices of objection? Where are the pastors who treasure Jesus’ life and death for justice and righteousness? The judges whose wisdom and discretion detention without charge is designed to neuter; every attorney (thank God for Dr Barnett) schooled and sworn to uphold the liberty of the subject as the first principle of law; all journalists whose life-breath is the freedom of expression and of the press: what do we all have to say?

Lieutenant General Meade is a gentleman deserving of high regard. I am disappointed by his recent statement because I know of his conviction that thoroughgoing reform of our social order is the only effective path to violence reduction. He is one of the architects of the excellent Project Hope. I will not think of him as an immoral man. But when his soldiers hear and heed his cry to arrest with impunity, we are all in peril. He and those who agree with them have no monopoly on abhorrence of murder. But the end does not justify the means.

More than that, isn’t it clear to us all that the authorities have run out of any constitutional-approved strategy to make us safe from ourselves and now, clodden-mouthed and crazed with their own failure, twist the authority we gave them so as to damage us, probably beyond repair?

Because history is replete in demonstrating how the chipping away of human rights by small infractions has led to autocracy, strong-man rule and an erosion of real freedom. In our desperation, we must not go down that road. Tek sleep mark death!

THREE MEMORIALS

Today is part of the first lockdown period, a necessary and inevitable sacrifice of our rights for the common good – established incontrovertibly by science and completely distinct from the false sacrifice of freedom discussed above. The lockdown involves no surrender to militarism.

But yesterday, churchgoers paid the price for the partygoers. If repeated, that is an unacceptable restriction of freedom.

Roy Fairclough was among the first batch of attorneys schooled in the West Indies. A fisherman’s son from Montego Bay with a clear and brilliant mind and a commitment to the cause of workers and ordinary people who often get chewed up by the legal system, he joined Clayton Morgan and another attorney in founding the legal aid movement, to which he remained committed until his untimely passing recently.

He was among that band of progressive lawyers who took on the government in the ‘70s in the successful struggle against the unconstitutionality of aspects of the Gun Court and Suppression of Crime Acts and the penalty of indefinite detention. Among several other causes advanced by Freedom Chambers, ‘Nando’ also contributed his exquisite talent and unconventional persona to the New Jewel government in Grenada before its implosion and overthrow by the Yankee and Jamaican imperialists.

Roy shared the fervour of the age to use the practice of law as a powerful agent for social transformation. His example deserves to be remembered and followed.

I admired Ernest Smith across the divide in Parliament. Passionate but not uncouth like his other colleague, Ernie had one abiding concern. It was that the people of South West St Ann were deriving little or no benefit from the rape of their environment by the bauxite companies; the hungry mouths left to scratch in the unrestored gaping craters, and the careless use of the Capital Development Fund for purposes which ignored his people’s needs.

When I last engaged him outside the Falmouth courthouse, we both regretted how little an MP’s advocacy helps to change things. Ernest by name and nature, his memory warrants our respect.

And then there was Dr Pauline Knight. Consummate public servant, she would come to Gordon House for hearings on various things, hear my importunate questions of the planning agency, usually ignored by other staff, then communicate quietly afterwards with the data and answers which were always helpful. More informed and insightful than many of the elected, her humility and ethic of service were so impressive. What a model!

Their stories sweeten the texture of life in Jamaica and should strengthen us to repel the tendencies which demean and deny our livity.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.