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<span style="font-weight: bold">BY JAMAICANS FOR JUSTICE</span>
Sunday, August 03, 2008
It is with deep disappointment that we read your editorial of the 30th July 2008. Disappointment at the ignorance of the role of human rights groups locally and internationally, as well as disappointment at the ignorance of the breadth of the work done by these groups displayed by your editorial board.
In response we provide the following specific comments.
We question your statement that there has been an "emergence of a preponderance of human rights groups". Preponderance in what - in numbers, weight, power, influence? Preponderance compared to what? We would suggest that the weight, influence, power and numbers of state agents (and other powerful private interest groups) far outstrip those of all human rights groups locally combined.
When you look at the human rights abuses worldwide of the last 50 to 100 years, it is those who hold state power who have committed the vast majority of them. The gulags, the holocaust, "ethnic cleansing", the disappearances in Argentina, apartheid South Africa, Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia, Mao in China, Pinochet in Chile; these are a few of the 'big' instances.
On a day-to-day basis, in countries across the world, the weight of state power continues to be used against the rights of individuals and groups. We would remind you of the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ".it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected."
In your listing of human rights groups you forgot to list the largest and oldest group of human rights defenders in the country - The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). We presume this omission was not out of ignorance of its role. Established in 1867 and 8,500 members strong, the JCF has as it primary responsibility the upholding of the laws, the protection of the citizens, the detection and investigation of crimes and the bringing of perpetrators to the courts.
These functions largely involve the protection of human rights. We would add that one would expect that these agents of the state who are charged with the defence of rights and the rule of law would need to be held to a higher standard than that of the so-called 'criminals'.
You also in that listing omitted to mention the groups such as Woman's Inc, Association of Women's Organisations in Jamaica, Women's Media Watch, Youth Opportunities Unlimited, the Coalition on the Rights of the Child, the Jamaica Aids Support and many, many others which work for the defence of the rights of special groups in the society.
You say that the groups you do list, "JFJ, IJCHR and FAST appear to have a common target". What an unfortunate choice of words and what an unfortunate display of ignorance. The three groups you list have as a common aim the 'defence of human rights'. They defend these rights in many different ways and with many different projects.
What they do, together with most non-governmental organisations (NGOs) defending rights internationally, is they work in the area where the imbalance of power is most marked and the protection of rights most vulnerable, the place where the power of the state is used against the individual.
The simple explanation we use is, 'When the gunman is breaking down your door you call the state agents (119 in Jamaica) for protection. When it is the state agents who are breaking down your door, who can you call?" When Angela Fennel Reid had her door kicked down by policemen, to whom could she appeal for help? The police?
She called a human rights organisation. She shouldn't have to. The police ought not to have been treating her in the same way that any criminal gang would have. It is in that space of power imbalance and individual vulnerability that most NGO human rights groups operate in an attempt to even the balance and provide protection.
You say that, "It cannot be that breaches of human rights are only contained in abuses by the police and/or soldiers". We would absolutely agree with you, and question the implied ignorance of all the other work carried out by human rights groups, a lot of it previously highlighted in your paper. For your readers we would simply list JFJ's work on: access to information, abuse in the children's homes, defence of the right of the people to have a say in the character and composition of their final court of appeal (our work on the Caribbean Court of Justice); human rights education in schools, and with police; social and economic justice with communities; and our anti-corruption education projects, to name a few.
To our certain knowledge IJCHR (the oldest non-governmental human rights group in the Caribbean) has extensive programmes on: human rights as part of the school curriculum; the death penalty; the rights of incarcerated persons; the rights of the mentally ill in prisons; and the education of police in human rights and policing. We hope this list informs your editor as well as your readers.
Your comment that there is an "inordinate insistence on making loud cries when the security forces go wrong but never nearly enough when criminals and other groups go wrong" again betrays a profound lack of understanding of the role and mandate of non-governmental human rights groups. We would remind you that the vast resources of the oldest and largest group of human rights defenders in Jamaica (the JCF) are arrayed to bring to bear the resources of the state when "criminals and other groups go wrong".
We would suggest that there is absolutely nothing wrong with our loudly pointing out the egregious abuse of power by state agents, who are given power and resources by the citizens for lawful activity. We will continue to do so as long as those abuses continue.
To suggest, as your editorial does, that our work has created "the unfortunate perception that our human rights groups are more interested in the welfare of alleged criminals than in their alleged victims" does your editorial board a grave disservice. It also does a grave disservice to the victims whose stories we have highlighted over the years, including Janice Allen, Jason Smith, Amanie Wedderburn, Renee Lyons, Michael Gayle, Angela Fennel Reid, Damion Roache, Hapete Henry, and many others.
You state that "we strongly believe that victims' rights are.paramount". So does JFJ.
People who are murdered by, beaten by, wrongly locked up by, threatened by, intimidated by the police are victims and are important. We would not like to believe that the editor of the Jamaica Observer would fall prey to the general presumption that if you are abused by the police you must, per se, be a criminal, as your statement would seem to suggest.
We take grave exception to the statement that "because their funding is attached to their stated mandate, human rights groups feel constrained not to stray from their articles of association or their memorandum of understanding". We stay true to our articles of association and memorandum of understanding out of a commitment to principle and an understanding of our mandate and find deeply offensive your suggestion that it is money that drives us.
We suggest you bring your evidence to the table. Our commitment to principle has cost us dearly in terms of lost support (personal and financial) and certainly, in JFJ's case, has cost us the granting of organisational charity status.
You state that at "some point, we have to deal with this monster". We could not agree more. For decades the society has been trying to deal with this monster. We have been committed to methods that have not worked, do not work, and cannot work. We have instituted methods like the Gun Court and the Suppression of Crimes Act; we have created endless "squads" and hailed myriad "crime fighters"; we have had a year in which police killings exceeded other homicides; we have turned a blind eye to, or encouraged or sanctioned criminal activity because it was "our" criminals, over whom we thought we had control, whether the party-affiliated criminals or the criminals in the security forces.
What we have not done is to implement the recommendations in the reports that might have troubled the highly connected or the powerful who are the 'brains and resources' residing within the political parties and their affiliated gangs, within the upper echelons of the security forces and within the private sector. Is this why we have never really gone after them or been able to implement measures which would have destroyed that link in the crime chain?
We are only too aware of the fact that there are bigger fish behind the criminal networks. This, we contend, is why they continue to thrive, because those in authority have not had the desire or the will to take the steps necessary (and recommended in every report written on Jamaica's crime problems since the Wolfe report in 1994) to deal with the corrupt linkages and the tentacles of organised crime which reach to the highest levels of all spheres of the society. JFJ is on record in many different forums calling strongly for the implementation of the recommendations in those reports which seek to cut those same corrupt linkages.
You say we need to "get on board". We would ask, get on board with what? Supporting measures that have failed and will fail again? On board with measures that breach fundamental rights? With measures that put more power into the hands of those who have shown that they are willing to abuse the power that they already hold; and willing to protect those who literally commit murder in the name of the state? We will not be able to get on board with any of that.
In today's Jamaica, the focus has to be growth and development free of the shackles of the state of mind which suggests that "some are more equal than others", and more deserving of rights and the protection of those rights. Energy-consuming babbling about human rights groups "doing more", "getting on board" and "joining the fight" does a disservice to the dialogue that the country needs to undertake.
We reiterate that the mandate of the security forces in general and plain terms is to serve and protect the citizenry. To undertake this they must understand the foundation, nature, substance and restrictions of the rights of all individuals with whom they come into contact. We would expect a government also to understand the fundamental nature of individual rights in the prevention, detection and prosecution of crime.
We would expect no less an understanding from the editorial board of one of the country's largest newspapers. It is deeply disappointing to see, and read, the deep lack thereof.
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...recently, we had PJ wid his blak man time an we know he meant hue more dan he meant race...an u haffi admit dat no ongle dose of lighter hue maintain the divide r the attitudes of the divide....as people move into a diffrant bracket, dem ape wat dem perceive to be the way to behave....
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