Torture rife in Jamaica

HENLEY MORGAN

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

TORTURE is rife in Jamaica. Oh yes, though it's difficult for us to associate such a heinous act with a beautiful little island floating in the Caribbean sea populated by God-fearing people, torture is a daily occurrence right under our noses and sometimes under our very eyes. To appreciate the validity of this charge, one must first agree on a definition of torture.

Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person may have committed or is suspected to have committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in a public capacity.

It's impossible to say just when torture became a standard practice for meting out justice to suspected or condemned criminals, or in some cases to persons who posed a threat to the status quo. The crucifixion, widely practised by the Romans around the time of Jesus, was one of the most dastardly torturous acts. The victim was flogged until his back was a mass of bloody tissue and bone. Barely able to walk, he was forced to carry the crossbar, sometimes weighing up to 100 pounds, to the place of execution, then nailed through the wrist and feet to the upright cross. Death came slowly from suffocation, bleeding and pain.

The practice known as "hanged, drawn and quartered" was no less cruel. Practised in mediaeval England, this form of torture involved dragging the victim through the streets; hanging him to within seconds of his death; then tying his hands and feet to four stallions who on command galloped in different directions, sectioning the victim in the area of the bowels.

In the latter half of the 18th century, the practice called "walking the plank" became popular. Usually practised at sea, a plank was placed over the side of the ship. The victim, blindfolded, was forced to walk the plank not knowing which of his steps would land him into the treacherous water and eventual drowning or into the jaws of sharks.

Between 1933 and 1945, nearly 20,000 concentration camps were established by the Nazis. The German Third Reich used these camps primarily as extermination camps for mass murder. At camps such as Auschwitz, thousands of prisoners were subjected to forced labour; made to suffer exhaustion, starvation and exposure to the elements; eventually dying the cruellest of deaths.

Extreme forms of torture are still with us. In January 2009 President Barack Obama banned the use of water-boarding by the Central Intelligence Agency and the US armed services. In this form of torture the victim is made to lie flat on his back on a piece of board. The board is inclined so that the head is lower than the feet; water is then poured over the face so it enters the nostrils, causing the sensation of drowning.

Back to Jamaica: the most common form of torture is beating. In garrison communities, men are regularly tried for offences ranging from petty larceny to rape, and sentenced to be beaten usually with a pick-axe stick. Blows are inflicted to the head, to the knee, to the ankle and all over the body, with a crowd looking on, until the victim is immobilised. One may surmise that such acts fall outside the strict definition of what constitutes torture since no public official or the state is involved. That would be a mistake. The Report of the National Committee on Political Tribalism, July 23, 1997, reads thus: "The hard-core garrison communities exhibit an element of autonomy, in that they are states within a state."

The recently released report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Manfred Nowak, condemned the overcrowding, insanitary conditions and cruel treatment by warders in Jamaica's lock-ups, saying it reflects a total disregard for human dignity. With specific reference to the recent prisoner uprising at the Horizon Remand Centre, Nowak supported by Forensic Specialist Dr Derrick Pounder, pointed out that defenceless prisoners were severely beaten. Many of the injuries appeared to be of a defensive nature, confirming an observation made by Public Defender Earl Witter.

As if that is not enough to condemn us all to hell, the report of Retired Court of Appeal President Justice Paul Harrison, looking into the death of seven girls detained at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre, has at last made it into the glaring light of public scrutiny, and it isn't pretty. To find the equal, one must go back to the overcrowded slaver, plying the Middle Passage between the West Coast of Africa and the so-called New World where, like a serpent, it disgorged the remnants of its human cargo. Reading the report and listening to the stories of the girls themselves, one must consider whether the deprivations and forms of punishment meted out to wards of the state held in these hellholes euphemistically called places of safety, is not torture.

Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Rights to Physical Integrity, prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Jamaica's consistent violation of the covenant to which it is a signatory has caused the international watchdog group, Amnesty International, to liken it to a rogue state. How did the treatment of people in the state's care get this bad? The answer is painfully simple. It got this way because we allowed it to. The state is merely a reflection of what we have become: callous, uncaring and unfeeling towards anything and anyone outside the law that does not touch us personally.

Torture is rife in Jamaica and our government seems ill-prepared or unwilling to do anything about it.

hmorgan@cwjamaica.com

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COMMENTS (5)

Ras Barrington
3/5/2010

The Marquis deSade should not be forgotten. Due to his extensive endeavours in the field of torture; the word SADIST is derived from his name.
There are different types of torture; emotional, psychological and physical. They are all painful and perpetrated directly or remotely on the individual. the first torture in these parts , was when the Spanish Invader met a pregnant Taino Woman and proceeded to disembowel her. Then there are the slave raiding parties; capturing twelve and thirteen year olds and marching them hog tied and marched to a ship somewhere on the coast of West Africa. With human cargo packed like sardines; the ships sailed West to Jamaica. Sharks follow ships for food; due to the number of dead Africans thrown overboard, during the Middle Passage. Being on a slave ship, standing in your own excrement and suffocating for a breath of fresh air; sure is torture. Upon arrival, the slaves would be examined like wild beasts and then be branded with hot iron. There were beatings with the Cato nine whip, the burning of slaves alive, along with rape and other bodily mutilations. There was the famous kicking of the pregnant slave woman by the BUTCHER. So that her abortion could be enhanced; positively affecting the bottom line of the plantation. This is an Office of Prestige and Status on the PRISON CAMP called the Slave Plantation. The office of butchering the African Slaves. Another torture was bridling a man like an Ox or Mule to plow the field, and next to that was the usage of pregnant women as a two legged horse for the Slaver’s two wheeled carriage; in order to take him to TOWN. Slaves were chained and locked up at night; and that's where we get the legends of the ROLLING CALF. It was the Clanking of the Slave's chains early in the morning before the break of dawn. The night lamp were the eyes of fire. Sick ,old and worn out slaves with sores, were dumped alive in the morass swamp of Yallahs Pond. Such was the nature of torture in the Slave Pens and Prison Camps called Plantations in Colonial Jamaica.
And then came the heritage and continuation of this torture; after Shackle Slavery. The Slaver would invite all the potential rebellious slaves to a drinking contest on holidays. While the slaves were drinking one hundred and fifty proof rum; the slaver and his butchers would be drinking ice water or lemonade. So Massah would be the winner of the contest because in the end ; he would still be sober, the slaves being drunk could not plot to rebel; and they would eventually be tortured to death with diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. Jamaica has one of the highest rate of these sicknesses in the world. We still celebrate these Plantation Holidays by proving our manhood of who can drink the most. Mr. Wray and his nephew are in every shopping centre. There are situations of torture too numerous to mention over the past years: the rape and impregnation of domestic servants; the sleeping of sugar estate workers on the cold concrete , with the crocus bag as their bed spread; females denied taking French at a high school because of not looking European; living in a community where collective punishment is the order of the day, and fear rules. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly rules the common citizen's life. This is torture; as in a place called Sea View Garden. You can see the jobs , but you can't get them that’s torture on all levels. Women in fear of walking the streets in fear of being bullied or sexually assaulted ; even by the police. The brutality of the torture chambers called the barber shop and hair dressing parlor; with their chemicals cuts and burns. Just to eradicate all traces of the wool in our hair. Talking to the Security Force members he points his gun in your nostrils; the police raping your common law wife. Being in fear of your life because of your spiritual and cultural life style; persecuted and prosecuted, by the Police. the cutting of ones hair for the aforesaid reason and same enforcers of government are all torture and Cultural Genocide. We torture ourselves with the slave food that were scraps from the slaver's table; giving us more disease and a shorter life span. A Racist Cultural and Economic Warfare of Genocide practiced on the Rastafari People with all its brutality; due to Ancestral Cultural Rights of the Ganja Plant; is torture on all levels to the core of the matter.
The constant high interest rate means that business can't expand and employ people. It is the financial Cato nine of the economy and it drives stress. With high interest rates as the driver; the stress causes business men to blow their brains out with a shotgun and more people become idle and unemployed; joining a culture of criminality. Finally, torture is living in a country where you have no say in the governance and the things that affect your daily life; although you pay your taxes and all other bills to the best of your ability. One can always find more examples of torture right in Jamaica. It is real and refined with economic underpinnings. Pangs of HUNGER!!!

dennis wilson
3/3/2010

whats the point? jamaica has become a place of the lawlwess and the disorderly....therefore this is not foreign to any society where the rule of law is absent. your hisrorical anylisis is boaring...I would prefer if you had taken a more practical and pragmatic, rather than an abscure and etic approach....what would you have done confronting an intruder inside your house or property, notwithstanding the level of crime and visciousness that exist in jamaica..? Would you want my answer to that????

baRt siMsen
3/3/2010

Jamaica is run and has always been ran by pappy show governments.. Lawd Gadd!

Duane Parkin
3/3/2010

Henley,
You have made some good points, however I think you neglect to make the distinction between mob behavior by hooligans (garrison violence) and government institutional torture (police beatings for information). I do not believe the government’s acceptance of garrison violence is a method of torture as the hooligans who carry out the mob action do have the choice of saying no. Their lives are not overtly at risk. On the other hand, the acceptance of police brutality within the police force and government is a form of torture against the citizens of Jamaica as their lives are at risk for non compliance.
It is a fuzzy fine line but one I believe that has to be highlighted.

3/3/2010

Should have written this a decade ago maybe we would have been much further along the path to a solution.
I admit the GOJ is unwilling and uncaring but we have merely improved our lot from an inept, corrupt and uncaring Government to an inept, uncaring Government.
....TG....

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Torture rife in Jamaica