Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Ken Baugh is reported to have told the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament that reports on Jamaica are more harmful than helpful. He is reported to have said: “I have a difficulty with these reports when they get in front of the press… I find them excessive, inappropriate and overdone in terms of harmful statements that are made that can affect these countries.” Dr Baugh’s discomfort is born out of recent reports on Jamaica, especially from the United States, that have not painted us in a good light.

The recent International Narcotics Control Strategy Report by the US State Department is a case in point. The government was excoriated in this report as not doing enough to erase the image of Jamaica as an important trans-shipment point for drugs going to the American mainland. Big players in the illegal industry, the report suggests, are allowed to carry on with impunity. Also, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel and Inhumane Treatment recently lamented the condition in Jamaican lock-ups where overcrowding, insanitary conditions and cruel treatment of prisoners are prominent features of these institutions.

Dr Baugh and the rest of us who follow these issues in our country know that the concerns raised by these bodies are matters about which many of us have written and demonstrated against over the years. Jamaicans for Justice and the Jamaica Council for Human Rights have repeatedly called attention to the treatment of persons in the custody of the state. We know of the cruel and degrading treatment that is often meted out to them and of the fact that when taken into custody they are forced to live in environments not fit for human habitation. Witness the Armadale report which exposed appalling conditions under which wards of the state are forced to live. When locals bleat about them the government is not aroused to action. But as soon as international agencies address them, then there is a flurry of activity to refute them or present all kinds of rationalisation as to why things are the way they are.

Instead of lamenting the reports especially when they appear in the press, the fundamental question to be asked is whether they are factual or not. If they are not, then everything must be done to refute them vigorously and bring a contrary view more in line with the facts. If they are, then no amount of whining or attempts at obfuscation on the part of government can alter the truth. There are two things that can be done with the truth: you either accept it or you reject it. Rejecting it does not alter the empirical evidence on which it is based, but merely delays the inevitable consequences of its rejection. We have been living for too long in this country with our attempts to negate the truth instead of facing it and dealing resolutely with it.

Governments get particularly uncomfortable when the truth is reported in the press. Part of Dr Baugh’s discomfort is not only that the reports are made but that they are carried in the press for all and sundry to see. It is particularly galling when they hit the foreign press because now the “reputation” of the country is in jeopardy; investors will not be motivated to invest and the tourists will not come. I am not sure what reputation we are protecting for we have done a great deal ever since independence to sully our reputation as a nation. The country we are today is far removed from what the British left us. Crime is at an all-time high and the murderous intentions of a few among us have reached a critical mass.

The truth, Dr Baugh, is that we are the architects of our own demise and inhibitors of our own progress. Our international reputation that the world focuses on is a function of what we have done to ourselves, not what others have done to us. We have murdered on an average over the last decade more than 1000 of our citizens per year. Everyone seems agreed that the garrison phenomenon has spawned most of the murders and hard crimes that we see in the country, yet there seems to be no resolve on the part of succeeding governments to dismantle these garrisons. Are we waiting for the Americans to come and do it for us? Will they be forced to come here as they have had to do in Haiti, because we have allowed law and order to break down to such an extent that a foreign power has to intervene to save us from ourselves?

Little by little Jamaicans are being besieged wherever they go. The tightening immigration noose being used by the American authorities to constrain Jamaicans from visiting that country is just the tip of the iceberg. Our local entertainers are now discovering that the rest of the world will not tolerate the profanity, homophobia and assorted misogynous assaults on women that characterise the dancehall lyrics. The recent refusal by the Barbadian authorities to allow two of our prominent artistes to perform in that country is a case in point. The charge by the Barbadians is that they do not want the minds of their young people to be “polluted” by the lyrics contained in this genre of music.

This is not the time for lamentations about what others are saying about us. If we determine that they are speaking the truth or that their perceptions are not far from the truth, then we need to develop the resolve to deal with whatever the problems are. There are too many things wrong with our country. It is time that we see the kind of governance that will seriously acknowledge what is wrong and that will engage the energy of the people in fixing what has been broken for too long.

stead6655@aol.com

www.drraulston.com