Ronald Thwaites | What is peace?

“Is a nex set of terrorist dem a create.” That was the assessment of the big woman downtown as she recounted to this newspaper last weekend how a man in her community was slaughtered by the police. I make absolutely no judgment about that event. But she is right about its certain effect. People have ‘feelings’ and have a loathing of perceived injustice. Eyre ignored Bogle and George William Gordon and the Morant Bay carnage happened.

Nowadays, there is widespread anger at and distrust of the police and soldiers among people from whose belly these “peace officers” are sprung and upon whom a mutual relationship of trust and dependence is essential to craft the peaceful social order for which Andrew Holness and all of us yearn.

BREEDING TERRORISTS

This society breeds criminals as much as peace-makers. The tree of liberty in Jamaica grows gormandisers. I felt the hate and distrust of authority in Central Kingston after Green Bay. Among countless other incidents during more than 50 years of legal practice and public exposure, I remember the sight and smell of a “terrorist” youth’s corpse, still oozing blood and brain tissue, at his gate, same day after being freed in the Supreme Court for want of evidence. “Yu get wey from di judge but not fram me. Tek dis,” were the reported words, accusation, trial, verdict and sentence all in one, from the man of high rank and office, paid to protect, and, too often, to match terror with terror – and expect peace (forget about justice) to be the consequence. Madness.

I condemn all violence, except only in genuine self-defence, by criminals, those who drudge guns, licensed or unlicensed, state-sponsored, domestic, in the local and foreign Gaza or Tel Aviv.

OUR GEORGE FLOYD

Has there been any official reaction to the near-George Floyd incident last week? The television can blur the faces, but the reality of a policeman with his knee in the belly of a child, on the Calvary of the street, the boy offered the sour wine of pepper spray when he cried, “I thirst”, has been embedded in the minds of all school youths. And the inspector did nothing, they say. Thank God for the easily concealed, ubiquitous smart phone, in place of the body cameras, which will never be worn by police, to counteract official lies.

“Di pickney too facety an renk to disrespek police. Big up di one Bukele,”some say, many others feel. The big woman on Sunlight St seh, “Is a nex set a terrorist dem a create.”Oh yes, the public conscience will forget by next week. Horace, Andrew and the other standard-setters will remain silent and speak volumes. Chuck will contradict his earlier self and defend life sentences for child-murderers and the Parliament will continue to be distracted from real work by a school-marm.

But the children will remember … and remember.

THE REFUGEES

I think it was the secularist Bertrand Russell who, perhaps in different words, defined three great purposes of his life as the search for love, the thirst for knowledge and the abhorrence of cruelty. What do we really believe true peace to be? Do we even acknowledge a difference between virtue and coarseness? Can it be described as anything but cruelty for which we will have to give account on Judgment Day, if we believe Matthew 25, to drive women and children refugees back to certain distress and peril in Haiti without due process and access to even legal representation; basic standards which we skin up in world forums and say we defend? Even if you are not religious, doesn’t the Golden Rule of reciprocity, a humanistic concept apply? Look how many of us seek and receive refuge abroad.

This government would have sent Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus back to Herod to face John the Baptist’s fate if they had been in power in Egypt that first Christmas.

A MINISTRY FOR PEACE?

So The Gleaner last week spoke blithely in strained support for the prime minister’s tentative suggestion that a distinct ministry for the promotion of peace and social order be considered. There is merit in the proposal to bring together all the agencies whose purpose is to foster personal and community wholesomeness.

But, isn’t that what the whole purpose of government should be? And what else should national security mean, but that? However, don’t let’s damn the proposal with faint praise. Any and every effort which supports personal and community flourishing deserves support. Remember that peace is much more than just an absence of war. The legacy of a great leader would be to preside over all agencies of the state and enthuse all citizens to apply ourselves to such a purpose.

The newspaper correctly thinks that for peace to reign, a united national effort will be required, including the support of the Opposition. But there is no indication that steps are being taken to engineer this. The parties can’t even sit down for civil discourse at Vale Rotal or at CMOC. Sadly, it has the lowest chance of success during politics time. That doesn’t mean we should not try.

DRIFT FROM PURPOSE AND PEACE

Recall also that nowadays there is a much more formidable Opposition in Jamaica than the other political party. It is the majority of alienated, cynical citizens of all ages and demographics, but especially the young, who have lost the will of a previous generation to struggle, who are detached in a digital ether and often beset with overweaning self-interest.

Jamaicans are so bright that in history, though insignificant in number, we have often mirrored and even led global concerns – for freedom, for equity and for righteousness. In this moment of inflection, can we avoid what has been described as the “perfect Hegelian synthesis of modern culture” – a compound of know-nothing populism, undisciplined appetites and vacuous entertainment which descends into ugly farce and authoritarian cruelty?

So as we line up in church, at the expensive green and orange conferences; at other places where in frustration, we wear vulgarity and ignorance as badges of honour, can we answer our own nagging question: what would the peace of this nation really look like?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at the UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.