Hypocrisy of human rights groups
Many ... secure funding from int’l organisations that are selective in where they flex their muscles.
EVERY SINGLE time there is a proposal for more draconian measures to rein in the terrorists who spill our blood without a second thought, the human rights groups appear, condemning with full force. It goes without saying that the ‘shoot to kill’, and the call for the resumption of hanging by senior government ministers, will be met with condemnation and flimsy “evidence” of how they will lead to the deaths of innocents. There is never an outrage for the innocent lives lost by rampaging criminals. A prime example of which is that there seems to be more of a preoccupation with the right to privacy of the confessed Cocoa Piece killer, than the right to life his victims.
I am not one to doubt for a minute that the pendulum will swing too far, and the abrogation of human rights by the State left unfettered, if there is no voice to oppose. The cosmos and any great society is held together by opposing forces achieving the perfect balance. Idealists and pragmatists all have a role to play in a democratic society if it is to sustain itself during times of peace. The civilisation upon which Western democracy is based, the ancient Greeks, however, realised that one man one vote had no place during times of war. There are times when the pendulum must gently sway towards the pragmatic hawks who are necessary to achieve peace in a non-peaceful manner, so the doves can be free to criticise their methods of achieving victory.
Jamaica is not at peace. There is an undeclared war taking place where victory by attrition and migration is assured for the criminal elements. Who can afford to run will run. The State cannot offer us the reassurances of protection or justice. We are rapidly running out of options while the patient bleeds out on the operating table. The states of emergencies (SOEs) did nothing more than kick the can down the road for a while. The gangs are still active and probably even more so now that the SOEs have been lifted. The Government played the one ace up its sleeve in the form of the SOEs and the gangsters now know there is nothing left to throw at them. With all the calls for the political will to separate politicians and gangsters, and the urgent need to reform the police force, we are playing ostrich to the fact that human rights groups have a role to play in the rapid decay of our society.
CONCRETE STEPS
Had Jamaica been run by the forefathers of democracy, the noise surrounding criminal rights would have been quieted as concrete steps would have been taken to wipe out this existential threat to the State. Criminals must visibly see the barbaric consequences of their actions when they are publicly hanged. Detractors will be quick to produce evidence that hanging will not dissuade criminals. This data is drawn from different societies. Our Jamaican data is different.
After every slave revolt, the organisers and collaborators were publicly tortured, burned alive, gibbeted, hung, and decapitated heads put on spikes to serve as a warning to those who would consider treason against their masters. Armchair human rights experts will quickly say that that never stopped the slaves from revolting. True, but it stopped enough of them from doing so that the vastly outnumbered plantocracy thrived for three hundred years. The psychological impact of seeing the consequences of your actions played out in public has been shown to modify behaviour. Lynching in the United States subdued Southern Blacks. Nobody chews gum in public in Singapore. The criminals need to know if they challenge the police, they will be killed, whether or not a don put a gun in their hand. Maybe then the cowards will not be so quick to commit to a weapon.
This unfortunately is not to be, as human rights groups such as Amnesty International, who have no empathy for Palestinians and Iraqis, will be quick to highlight the plight of the victims of our security forces’ attempts to fight back. INDECOM will sentence any accused officer to career purgatory, while they prepare cases against them at the rate of molasses flowing in winter. Where is the incentive then to challenge criminals in a shootout? The pendulum has clearly swung too far in the direction of criminal rights.
Many human rights groups secure funding from international organisations that are selective in where they flex their muscles. It is a reflection of how poor and insignificant we are on the world stage why these groups wield so much influence over our affairs. The same rings true for the International Criminal Court, which has only prosecuted Africans, while perpetrators of war crimes in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Libya and Serbia remain untouched in their European and North American homes.
The killing of criminals in shoot-outs and the hanging of murderers pale in comparison to what obtains in many countries and ignored by international human rights groups. Their relevance is primarily a result of their focus on developing countries. Our local rights groups need to stop dancing for their funding from these hypocrites, and allow our security forces to wage the necessary war on our domestic terrorist cells. The solution to our crime problem is multifaceted, but the velvet glove of reform ought to be clothing an iron fist.