Forget the enquiry; make a movie instead
“Tivoli Gardens bore classic features of a war zone. There were burnt-out houses and apartments and unmistakable signs of the explosion of incendiary devices, described by residents as “bombs”. There were many blood-spattered interior concrete walls and floors and aluminium windows shot out or riddled with bullet holes indicating inward heavy weapon fire. Exterior walls of buildings also, bore physical indicia of high-powered weapon fire. Frightened and traumatised residents (children, women and aging men but mainly women) cowered in fear. Dwellings had been thoroughly ransacked.”
— From the Interim Tivoli Report
The callousness with which we treat life in Jamaica has been made abundantly clear again in the last week after the debate raged on as to whether or not the killing of our citizens by the State was deserving of an enquiry.
Tivoli residents don’t want a talk shop, suggested The Most Honourable Edward Seaga, former prime minister of Jamaica and former member of parliament for West Kingston, who experienced two other such sieges in his community during his 40-plus years there. “Here we go again! Another Tivoli enquiry. Who’s going to pay for it?” tweeted Owen James, he of the nightly television news business report. Annette Marshall is adamant that no Tivoli resident will settle for less than $1 million in compensation for loss, pain and suffering and in an interview with another newspaper added: “Please do not take the whole year for us to get it. Let us have a merry Christmas and even a good Independence.”
You have got to be kidding.
At close to 55,000 words, the Interim Report, a “special” and extraordinary report to Parliament on the “continuing investigations undertaken by the Public Defender into events which led to the greatest loss of life in a single State security forces operation in independent Jamaica: 76 civilians and one soldier” reads in part like a paperback novel and, in other parts, like poetry; for the public defender, as the best of our lawyers often are after years of performing in a courtroom, is ‘good pon de mout’ and he writes beautifully.
But fact is stranger than fiction, and the preliminary report on the occupation of Tivoli Gardens by State security forces which began on the night of May 23, 2010 is a must-read. rjrnewsonline.com/local/full-text-of-tivoli-report?utm_source=rjr&utm_medium=news
And a long read too. So right away I confess to a sentimental bias in selecting those passages from the report which support my belief that, in the face of criticism over what may be the exorbitant cost of an enquiry, we may never, ever get to the bottom of how a Government could turn against its own people, and a member of parliament allow his constituents to be killed.
The work starts out with a brilliantly written six-page apologia wherein the public defender acknowledges those characters who called for his resignation over the “relentless criticism by all who have rightly expressed impatience over the delivery of this Interim Report”. Woven in that apologia is an irresistible pull quote that would be perfect for the movie trailer: “…are the faultfinders all well-intentioned? Are their real motives honourable, or sinister and deplorable? Time will tell.”
The cast of characters is indeed rich. There is Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke with his “reputation of crime overlord and his standing in the community; the long reach of his influence, his patina of benevolent protector of the poor, the political links and patronage which he may have enjoyed and, how all this may have led (inexorably) to the cataclysm of May, 2010”.
And there are the “sedate” commissioner of police and chief of defence staff whose suggestion that “disparity between the number of civilian dead and the number of firearms” said to have been recovered up to that time, (ie 72:4) is the “evident disproportionality” suggesting that there had been “excessive use of deadly force” was “not unusual”.
Having regard or, compared to what? asks the public defender rightly, and continues: “The gentlemen will want to explain that rejoinder some day. For this seemingly inscrutable response to a matter of such gravity and historical importance suggested that the heads of the security forces actually regarded the death toll as a matter of no, or no particularly notable consequence.”
We are reminded by the public defender that: “The Government is guarantor of those constitutionally defined rights and freedoms of the citizens. But a largely quiescent majority of citizens and the poor were, and remain, hugely ignorant of them. This ignorance has fomented endemic apathy and is alleged to have resulted in routine abuse of those rights (the right to life in particular) by renegade members of the State security forces.”
In the vein of the block-buster summer read Shades of Grey, we could call the movie Shades of Green and Orange, what with the tales of blood and brutality. In the case of one complainant, a Rastafarian, who was ordered to clear road blocks on Spanish Town Road and to pick up dead bodies after which a soldier came up to him and said, “Me no like Rasta, unno a battyman and everything ungodly. (Who) then took out a Rambo knife and proceeded to cut off (his) locks” and later made (him) “walk on (his) knees for about an hour.” After which he was kicked in his right side and region of the kidneys by a policeman, making him writhe in pain.
But the Rastafarian got off easy, praise Jah, in comparison to the men in the morgue who were among the “three large mounds of tagged corpses, most in varying stages of decomposition, many nude or scantily clad, piled up on the bare concrete floor: a macabre, surreal spectre of mass slaughter.”
And we don’t want an enquiry? Are we more worried about how much it will cost than we are about the chances that a massacre has taken place not once, but twice, and may happen a third time? Are we crazy? I’ll leave you with the words of Judge Patrick Robinson, president of the International Criminal Tribunal who is quoted extensively in the Report: “The simple, plain truth is that in no country with a Constitution that entrenches the right to life can 70 people be killed in peacetime in a single incident, whether by the security forces or by private persons, and national life and affairs continue as though nothing unusual has taken place.”
scowicomm@gmail.com