RIGHTS-JAMAICA: Scandal Over Round-Up of Homeless Continues to Taint Gov’t

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dionne Jackson-Miller

MONTEGO BAY, Feb 1 2000 (IPS) - In the two weeks since homeless people and the mentally ill stood shoulder to shoulder with lawyers and retirees to demand a probe into last July’s forcible removal of 32 homeless persons from Montego Bay, the government has come almost full circle on the issue.

The protest was carried out at Jamaica’s annual National Prayer Breakfast, an occasion intended to foster national unity and cooperation.

But as well-dressed business, church and political leaders gathered in air-conditioned hotel dining rooms in the urban centres of Kingston, Montego Bay and Mandeville to join hands and pray in nationally televised ceremonies, small groups of protestors stood outside holding placards.

“Prayer without works is dead” read a placard held by one of the 32 street people who had been forcibly removed by the police, while businesswoman Donna Duncan said the demonstrators were there to call for the truth.

“You have a cross-section of the leaders in Montego Bay, Mandeville and Kingston attending, so we’re trying to appeal to their conscience, as well as the governor general,” she said.

Duncan and many of the other protestors were supporters of the human rights group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) a group which is calling for a commission of enquiry into the detention and removal of the 32 street people.

Three men are scheduled to go on trial next month for the incident. But JFJ has argued that the men – a truck driver, an employee of the government’s street cleaning agency, and a police inspector – are being made into scapegoats.

The group says low-level government officials could not have masterminded and authorised the carefully planned midnight round- up of the street people, who say they were tied up, doused with pepper spray, and dumped dangerously close to a muddy lake containing bauxite waste.

It is widely believed that a circle of powerful men and women in the resort city of Montego Bay planned the round-up to rid the streets of the homeless and mentally ill. However, subsequent police investigations ran into what they called a “wall of silence,” and failed to turn up evidence linking anyone other than the three men to the kidnapping.

“We want an enquiry into what happened to our street people in Montego Bay, we have been calling for it from the very beginning,” said the chairperson of the Montego Bay chapter of JFJ. “We are not satisfied with the fact that they have tried three people. We don’t believe those people could have possibly got up in the night and picked up people. They were given orders, they were acting under instructions.”

Advocates of a further probe into the incident maintain that a commission of enquiry would have the power to subpoena witnesses, and is more likely to uncover the truth because it carries more weight than a police investigation.

But in an address to Parliament last week, Prime Minister Percival Patterson not only dismissed JFJ’s call, but questioned their motives.

According to Patterson, the group’s call for a commission of enquiry is without foundation. “It has refused or refrained from supplying a single straw with which to make the bricks that any Commission could use to build,” he said. “In the absence of a scintilla of evidence, and without a single new witness identified as being prepared to come forward and convert rumour into fact, no Commission that I have the competence to establish could even get started.

“The government is not going to be swayed in its decision simply because there is a small but very vocal minority advocating a course the motives of which are very, very clear to all and sundry,” Patterson added.

But after a storm of controversy erupted over what many saw as the Prime Minister’s cavalier dismissal of the group – which has been hailed for its strong human rights advocacy in less than a year of existence – and what many believe is his continuing protection of powerful political and business leaders, Patterson softened his position.

By the end of last week, he was offering the group access to all government records relating to the case, and promised to convene a commission of enquiry if any additional evidence surfaced.

Calls for the commission continued to mount, however, with the Jamaica Council of Churches and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica adding their voices in support.

And Monday, the Prime Minister backtracked even further, saying that he had ordered the police to “return to Montego Bay to interview any further witnesses and collect any additional statements available, in relation to the forcible removal of homeless persons.”

The Prime Minister has said that any additional evidence “in respect of criminal wrong-doing” will be turned over to the solicitor general and the director of public prosecutions to determine whether a legal foundation exists for a commission of enquiry.

But some assert that Patterson’s reversal is merely political manoeuvring designed to quiet the growing criticism. According to observers, it is likely that any physical evidence has long since been destroyed – a fact many say the prime minister is well aware of.

Whatever the government’s decision, however, some business leaders in Montego Bay support the idea of an enquiry, if only to halt the rumours of their own involvement.

“Talking as a human being and as a Montegonian, I am sick and tired of people pointing the finger at us,” says hotelier and president of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce Josef Forstmayr.

“It would be a good start as long as it is done properly and establishes what happened. I think we would all be relieved if there is something that moves this thing into another level.”

Tour operator and chairman of the Montego Bay Cruise Ship Council Lee Bailey agrees. “A dark cloud hangs over the situation,” he said. “As long as we don’t know what happened, everybody will be a suspect. I don’t want to spend my life as a suspect.”