Cecil GutzmoreDO CLERGYMEN pray? Clever cynics, spotting the lurking pun, will answer: "Yes, they do upon their flock."
Leaving preying clergy firmly to one side, I wondered: what role had been accorded to prayer by those the media called the "leadership of the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman" in their deliberations leading to the press conference they called on Friday 20th April 2001, following their 32nd Synod.
During the press conference they denounced Amnesty International (AI) with more vituperation than I recall from any member of the PNP Government (though not from all newspaper columnists or one talk-show host). Was it really through prayer and supplication for wisdom and guidance from the Almighty that the Rev. Roderick Hewitt and others were led to their assault on AI? Some of their charges (AI had "dissed" Jamaicans: AI was "out of order") sounded shockingly like the language of our individuals and communities in their fratricidal, street-fighting moments.
Other charges were bizarrely far-fetched (Has AI really failed to re-orient itself from a previous "Cold War" posture? Does it possess the claimed "super-power mentality" and what does it mean? Does AI genuinely have a "myopic interpretation of justice"?)
Nowhere in the coverage of the outpourings of the spokespersons for the United Church could I recognise the AI Report I have carefully read and re-read. Nor did I hear anything more than a caricature of AI's Secretary-General, Pierre Sane, who I listened to on a number of occasions during his most recent Jamaican sojourn. It is true that under his direction AI's gaze has remained strongly focused on the values of ending state injustice worldwide and on upholding of the rule of law everywhere.
This will inevitably seem "myopic" to clergymen and others who are unwilling to see our Jamaican authorities as persistent and wilful violators of those vital values. AI's charges must sound outrageous to those unable to see how seriously the now rising tide of Jamaican police homicides, including the Braeton killings (and official attitudes to it) menaces human values that are beyond compromise, that cannot be subject to the mere convenience of states and governments.
The explanation for the United Church's anti-AI stance may lie buried deep in questionable religious views about policing society. For those holding the relevant views policing passes as quasi-sacred, as semi-sacral. I once attended a talk by a police inspector at the Methodist Church in the Harlesden district of north-west London. The context was some now out-of-memory incident of racist policing by London's Metropolitan Police towards local Afro-Caribbean people. The inspector argued that policemen are God's servants doing God's work who, therefore, deserve and require the wholehearted support of all God-fearing citizens.
Policemen are the modern successors to kings in the matter of divine right. The thinking is that society is God's creation and those who protect it from perceived and feared internal enemies are nothing less than God's agents. To paraphrase King James I of England: "As it is sacrilege to dispute what God may say, so too is it sacrilege to dispute what policemen may do or say."
On a number of occasions over the past few years I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to one of the United Church leaders I noticed at their April 20 press conference. I had to ask myself how such a man came to be associated with the approach adopted by his church, which is barely rescued from infamy by the fact that the leaders are also said also to have called much more quietly, it seemed for an "independent inquiry into the Braeton shootings." It may be that the media distorted the message of the United Church. Possibly its leadership really expended as much time and passion on the details of this inquiry call as they did on denouncing Amnesty International. Since that call coincides with one I made in this column some weeks ago let me take this opportunity to support them and to amplify it.
The Gleaner, in publishing the autopsies of the Braeton Seven, took a bold and important step. It deprives the authorities of any basis they may have claimed for the argument that due process, on its own, is at all an adequate or appropriate way of dealing with the outrage that is Braeton.
Moral concern
Due process, as it normally operates in the matter of police homicide in the line of duty in Jamaica is virtually a non-process. Even at this moment the investigators into Braeton appear all too busy collecting 'evidence' against the victims.
The autopsies represent the strongest possible prima facie evidence destroying police claims that the Braeton Seven died in a police-versus-'criminal' shoot-out. This is so serious a matter that an inquiry, wholly independent of, but fully facilitated by the Government of Jamaica, is absolutely necessary. Sadly, the apparent non-existence of Government moral concern in this matter may prevent them perceiving this obvious truth.
The inquiry must take in more than Braeton. I advocate confining it to all police killings since August 2000 involving the Crime Management Unit led by Mr. Adams. The inquiry team needs, minimally, to include a leading attorney-at-law, with experience of civil and criminal issues in the context of police malpractice/civil disturbances (Lord Tony Gifford is amply qualified), a forensic pathologist and a ballistics expert. It should be international. I have already suggested that the International Commission of Jurists might be an appropriate agency to get involved.
Questions must be asked about the evidence at Braeton and whether any such evidence was destroyed (Why was disinfectant used? Who authorised it and why was the interior of the house so systematically wrecked by the police after the event?) A focus should be on all the negative implications of the regular failure of the police to treat the sites of homicide involving themselves as potential/actual crime scenes. Even the lowly question of what happens to the personal possessions (jewellery, say) of those shot and killed must be explored.
This is a question being asked by relatives of those slain at Braeton: apparently nothing has been heard by them about items such as a cell phone, personal jewellery and even a humble gas cylinder known to have been at the house and/or legitimately in the possession of some killed.
Cecil Gutzmore is a research student and lecturer at the University of the West Indies. E-mail: gutzmorecr@hotmail.com
