Of knees on necks
Last week in Parliament, we made pathetically weak attempts to come to terms with the atrocities taking place in Jamaican prisons while, in the justifiable trauma at the murder of two policemen, we could not bring ourselves to confront the chronic abuse of civil liberties by the security forces under the pretext of curbing crime. The names of Susan Bogle and Savion from St Mary could not be spoken.
We don’t even realise that we defend a hierarchy of lives, some worth remembering (hours of deserved, if dreadfully repetitive, tributes to departed MPs), others expendable, unequal, black and poor – collateral damage.
Noel Chambers’ name was called up often, less in regret for a life recklessly, to the point of being purposely, wasted, and more because of the embarrassment which “failed procedures” were causing those responsible, past and present. Don’t talk about compassion and care, make Jesus resemble Pontius Pilate. Blame the system. Invoke the process. Depersonalise the outrage.
No apology, no accountability for porous bullet-proof vests in a botched police operation: not a word about how a murderous deportee could have sourced high-powered war weapons and endless ammunition. No mention of the arrest and conviction of even one of the rich, well-connected merchants of death who finance crime (and some politics?) – some even from behind bars. Money scammed from the same poor. Just scrape up the ghetto-men; soon, let go those who support the dominant party and lock down the others. Evidence? Well, if they are not ours, they are’ X’ Party’s ‘gang’ members and so must be criminals. Seen!
Collectively, we had our knee on Noel Chambers’ neck for 40 years. It would have gone on longer too if the chinks, rats and maggots which we allow to breed at Tower St and Monk St had not caused his black
life to matter no more.
Now, in death, Noel Chambers, who we paid about $40 million of tax money to disrespect and destroy, just like George Floyd and all the others, here and wherever racism thrives, has more influence and notoriety than we afforded him and his kind in life. Hopefully, a movement towards real justice and against racism, classism and injustice is arising out of the crime which has been committed against them.
BEAR PORTION OF GUILT
I bear a portion of the guilt. Every legislator, lawyer or clergyman knows or suspects ( or wilfully deceives themselves) about the cruelty and corruption of the prison and lock-up system in Jamaica. Years ago, as young members of the Jamaica Council for Human Rights, the Unmuzzled Ox and the Caribbean legal aid movement, we used to visit the penitentiaries and force the authorities to show us everything – the madmen who needed representation, the people in the punishment cells, the innocent prisoners and the condemned men. We went to court for many of them, influenced policy and ministered to captives and those about to die. But I have not gone there for years. Not many have. Thank God for Carla
Gullotta, INDECOM, the Legal Aid Council, some churches and their few supporters.
The zeal to take revenge and punish real and imagined wrongs is deeply embedded in the post-slavery Jamaican psyche. We give back the same knees on necks as, through history, we are used to suffer. This explains the absence of real penal reform; the pitiful money voted to feed those in custody; the soul- and sanity-sapping hours of lockdown; the ignoring of institutionalised cruelty, neglect, homosexual rape; the dilution of hard labour to enforced idleness; and a constipated, process-ridden legal system unconsciously spawning injustice, despite wig and gown, the governor general’s pleasure, and ‘God Save the Queen’.
Well, neither the distant ‘nice lady’, Elizabeth, the generations of selfcongratulating legislators, nor the governor general’s pleasure (whatever that is), nor the unreformed prison service, could save Noel, the hundreds before him, and those likely to follow.
The police chief in Atlanta resigned recently when two of her men pursued and murdered a black man. Who will be held accountable for Noel, and the continuing suffering of all the others? Who will take responsibility before God for Sonia and Savion, the still the butchery which took place in that Barbican Road house? And very many more who suffer the depravity of our knees on their necks until they cannot breathe.
“Teach us true respect for all, stir response to duty’s call ...”
“When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.”