Dear Editor,

If the society wants war, and if we believe that “dem fi dead”, we are going in the right direction. The criminal element sets the pace, and our security forces are not too far behind. Last Thursday, the police killed 10 Jamaicans, six more on Monday of this week and two more the day after.

A couple of weeks before that, soldiers at Horizon Adult Remand Centre were allegedly treating Post 11 inmates to the type of “discipline” meted out to inmates described as enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Twenty-two months ago, soldiers and police were in an operation that resulted in the deaths of perhaps over 100 Jamaicans and the disappearance of about three.

When the state officially declares war, security forces are still subject to the rule of law. If “enemies” (usually non-citizens) are mistreated or killed arbitrarily, authorities will hold security forces to account. In Jamaica, however, superior officers routinely excuse breaches of human rights while investigative bodies – BSI, INDECOM, and the public defender – investigate without producing results that convict or exonerate. And the public continues to applaud the bloodletting unless the dead person is a friend or relative. In an atmosphere in which the state seems to devalue the lives of some of its own citizens, the criminal element seems spurred on to greater and greater atrocities.

The cycle goes on and investors find more peaceful places to locate their enterprises.

If the society wants peace and prosperity, we need to wheel and come again. The security target would be winning public confidence rather using brute force to create situations where communities trust criminals more than police. The public might then be willing to partner with the police in solving crime, so the police could rely more on brain than baton or bullet.

Prisons might become centres of rehabilitation rather than vehicles for degeneration into heartlessness. Educational apartheid might end, so students performing below average could find productive ways to express their potential. The next generation might discover what it is like to live in a country (not in an official state of war) that does not top world rates for murders and killings by police.

The choice between war and peace, poverty and prosperity, is ours.

Yvonne McCalla Sobers

sobersy@yahoo.com