The CCJ and "Nationalism"

In a Letter to the Editor last week, JLP leader Andrew Holness sought to defend his party's position on the Caribbean Court of Justice, the CCJ, saying he opposes the regional court because he is a nationalist.  He writes, "I feel compelled to affirm that I am a nationalist; always have been, always will be.  For me, it's Jamaica first.  I am unapologetic in the view that our priority as a people should be to consider and pursue that which is in Jamaica's best interest at all times."  Mr. Holness is trying to make it seem as though the CCJ and Jamaica's best national interest are mutually exclusive, when in fact accepting the CCJ is in the national interest, and therefore, a nationalist objective.  Accepting the CCJ is putting Jamaica first.

Because of the small size of Commonwealth Caribbean populations, it is in our best interest to collaborate with others in the region with shared interests and objectives, thereby easing the financial burden.  The University of the West Indies is one such example, where we have collaborated to educate our children and build our nations.  UWI, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have passed through its various campuses, is the region's greatest success story.  The CCJ can be another.

When the idea for a regional court was initially proposed--ironically by the JLP's own Hugh Lawson Shearer in 1970--it was acknowledged that going it alone would be a difficult and expensive road.  Shearer saw the utility of sharing resources for a regional final appellate court.  That logic still exists today.  Jamaica is in no better position today to establish its own final court.

In June last year, DPP Paula Llewelyn described the dismal state of the judicial system. "The system is underresourced and overburdened," she said.  "You must be prepared [to] give more than a gentle hint to the policy makers that, notwithstanding the tight fiscal space, try to find the resources so that more can be put into the justice system.  Where are we going to get the courtrooms and the court staff to try the cases?  You don't have the staff, the number of prosecutors, court reporters and judges to do that.  So what is happening is that the system is almost turning in on itself."

In October last year, the outcome of the Boulevard murder case brought this sorry state of affairs into perspective.  The trial of Corporal Louis Lynch and Constable Paul Edwards was discontinued on the basis that the matter was too expensive to pursue.  The DPP said it had been very expensive for the State retry the policemen because the Government had to pay millions of dollars to bring five overseas witnesses to the first trial.  Ms. Llewelyn explained, "I spoke to the Permanent Secretary at length and she indicated that $20 million... in light of all the competing claims on the budget at the Ministry of Justice, it just would not be possible at this time.  I don't have the luxury of being able to think of justice without the resources."

Yet, the JLP insists that Jamaica should pursue its own final court, even without giving any indication of the cost or resources it would require.  Some argue that governments often find money for things they want to do; however, Ms. Llewelyn's description of the systematic neglect of the justice system under both parties over the years does not lend confidence to such a supposition.  Additionally, the tight fiscal reality is such that public sector workers are being offered no more than a 5% salary increase after several years of stagnant wages, doctors are complaining daily about the state of the public health system, and there are insufficient funds to finance the courts that exist. Yet the JLP wants us to believe that money will magically appear to create and run a new court.  Even when another perfectly good court in the region, that we've already paid to join, already exists!

Since my radio commentary, the JLP's communication officer Nesta Morgan has pointed out that the party was not proposing this local alternative be implemented now.  I appreciate the clarification; however, this position is even more worrisome.  The JLP is insisting upon "economic independence" before contemplating changing the final court.  It is gravely unfortunate that they have tied justice to such a vague and idealistic goal.  How is economic independence to be measured?  When will it be attained?  In the five decades since political independence, this goal has remained elusive, and it may well continue to evade us for decades more.  In the meantime, the CCJ sits as a viable alternative, a wasted opportunity.

Use CCJ until a Jamaican final court is viable

Dr. Paul Ashley has made a sensible proposition.  In his Sunday Gleaner op-ed, he writes, "There can be no serious objection to any nation state aspiring to have its own judicial system located within its territorial boundaries.  However, the manifestation of that aspiration has to be based on the requisite infrastructure being in place and its general public having trust and confidence in the supporting institutions.

"Both parties will agree that Jamaica is not yet at that stage.  But this should not prevent us from moving in the general direction by de-linking from the colonial masters and placing reliance on others with a shared colonial experience and similar national aspirations.  There can be no harm in replacing the Privy Council with the CCJ and at some future period assessing the performance of such a court."

This is an idea I can support.  Leave the Privy Council and use the CCJ until Jamaica is ready to establish its own final court.  Since Jamaica is clearly not ready now, why delay or deny justice to those who seek it in the interim?  Why continue to subject our people to the exorbitant costs and prohibitive access to justice at the Privy Council, when a regional alternative exists that can dramatically improve access?

There is no good reason to oppose the CCJ.  It is a good court with qualified and respected judges who are insulated from political interference in a way not even the Privy Council is.  It is an affordable option for both the government and the people of Jamaica, and will increase access to justice.  The JLP is wrong for opposing it.

Je Suis Humaine!

Something happened twelve days ago that the world has largely ignored.  On Thursday, April 2, gunmen stormed Garissa University College in Kenya and murdered 147 people.  One hundred and forty two of them were students, promising university students like our own young people at UWI, UTECH, NCU and others.  They may have been studying fields as diverse as engineering, law, medicine, English Literature, History, Math, Biology, Chemistry and Art.  Young people just like the 350 who packed into UWI's Assembly Hall last Thursday to watch a man with a Muslim father from Kenya, Barack Obama.  One hundred and forty two of Kenya's future leaders, slaughtered.  Seventy-nine others seriously injured.  Over 700 students were taken hostage, the Christians killed, the survivors traumatized and psychologically impaired for the rest of their lives.  The university is now closed indefinitely.  Survivors say they do not want to return.  And who can blame them?

The killing is attributed to the militant terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, said to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda.  It was the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy, and the country's second deadliest overall.  It was more deadly than the 2002 attacks in Mombasa, the 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall, last year's bus bombings in Nairobi, and 12 times more deadly than January's attack on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo.  Yet, no one is saying Je Suis Kenya.

In Jamaica, we were so distracted the past two weeks by the visit of President Obama,
that we didn't notice the massacre in the country of his father, at a university a star like him may well have attended had he been raised in Kenya.  Many of us are too quick to dismiss things that occur outside our small spheres of reality, our little island bubble.  I'm very tempted to claim global apathy because the victims were Black.  And worse, Black Africans, often the lowest of the low in global significance.  I only go as far as saying "tempted", because it is also true that where violence is the norm, people become desensitized.  In Jamaica, 1005 people were murdered last year.  Our murder rate has long been at civil war proportions, but what would shock those in other countries barely makes the news here.

Today, April 14, also marks one year since Boko Haram kidnapped 270 school girls in Nigeria.  When they were taken from school in Chibok last year, no one seemed to care.  The Nigerian government wasn't even looking for them.  American news was busy covering other things.  Yet, when the attack on Charlie Hebdo occurred, everyone was quick with a response.  Nigeria's own President, Goodluck Jonathan, took mere hours to issue a statement condemning the attack, but ignored the Chibok girls for weeks, refusing to even acknowledge that it had happened.  It wasn't until several weeks later when the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls began trending on social media, that many finally paid attention.  The global media took notice.  Troops were supposedly sent in to find and rescue the girls.  Talk shows talked about why they hadn't been talking about it before.  But even that was fleeting.  It's been a year.  The Chibok girls are still not home, and most of us had forgotten all about them.

In response to the Garissa University attack, a social media campaign based in Kenya created the hashtag #147-not-just-a-number.  I don't think it made as much of an impact as the organizers would have liked.  Kenyans are now living in fear.  On Sunday, one student at the University of Nairobi in the capital died in a stampede that left 140 others injured.  A power transformer exploded on the campus, causing panicked students and teachers to flee, fearing another attack.  Nightly curfews have been imposed from 6:30 pm to 6:30 am in Garissa and surrounding counties.

It is time for us to start paying attention to the world around us.  The world is more connected than ever.
There is no reminder more sobering than last weekend's deportation of a 15-year-old Jamaican boy from Suriname, where he was said to be attempting to travel to Turkey, cross the border into Syria and join ISIS.  From there, it is feared he would have become radicalized, traveled back to Jamaica, and carried out an assigned mission.  Whatever that may have been, I shudder to think.

Terrorist groups are diversifying their appeal and their reach.  The faces of terrorism are changing.  Most of us are still visualizing terrorists as people who look like Osama bin Laden, olive-skinned, turban wearing Arabs.  But Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab have overtaken Al Qaeda in terms of global significance. And ISIS is no cave dwelling Al Qaeda.  They're a technologically sophisticated web with tentacles anywhere the Internet can reach, filled with young people searching for a cause, and black faces.  Their methods demonstrate intelligence and high levels of education.  Young people with cutting edge skills in videography and editing, planning, logistics, webmastery.  Some of them look just like you and me. That 15-year-old boy from St. Mary is one of us, but he could also have easily become one of them, and that is frightening beyond belief.

Garissa, Kenya was considered one of the safest places in East Africa.  It housed both military barracks and police headquarters.  Americans felt safe inside the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  Jamaicans feel safe on our borderless island nation.  But who needs a plane now when terrorists are able to hide among us because they ARE us?

Je suis Kenya! Je suis Nigeria! Je suis Jamaica! Je suis humaine!

The Media is Under-reporting Crime

      I’m tired of the constant criticisms of the media regarding our coverage of crime.  People just love to criticize the media… the media’s biased, the media’s too negative, the media’s this, the media’s that.  Much of the criticism is levelled on the basis of perception rather than facts.  It’s time to lay to rest the oft-repeated criticism that the media assigns too much prominence to crime, at the expense of other types of stories.  It’s simply not true.
I decided to do a content analysis of our own news here at Nationwide for the month of December.  I examined the headlines in our flagship news programme, Nationwide at 5, between December 1 and 24.  A total of 100 news items made the weekday headlines during that period.  The #1 story in December on NNN was the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry, with 19%.  Stories about the economy were second at 17%, followed closely by business stories at 15%.  Crime stories were the fourth most prominent in our news, at 11%.

     Additionally, upon examination of the types of crime stories covered by NNN during the period reviewed, it was evident that the majority of these stories were not cut-and-dried crime stories.  Most of them had some greater significance, as opposed to being simple reports about so-and-so killed so-and-so.  Here is a brief description of some of the stories I included in the crime category for this study:

• PNP Councillor Venesha Phillips shot at
• JLP caretaker condemns attack on councillor Phillips
• Knife attack at Sav-la-mar lockup
• 1 of 4 abducted women found
• Vybz Kartel possibly to be questioned over Cory Todd shooting
• Government websites hacked
• Body in Clarendon death squad case to be exhumed
• Break in at Parliament
• Policeman killed in Manchester
• 14 year old murdered
• Drugs seized

     I don’t have the specific crime statistics for December, but there were 1005 murders committed across Jamaica in 2014.  That works out to an average of 84 per month, not including other types of violent crimes such as shootings, rapes and robberies.  We reported 11 in our headlines, including only 3 murders.  The media is in fact under-reporting crime.
     Now before anyone says well that is just NNN, I also examined the Gleaner.  I looked at all their front page stories between December 1, 2014, and January 11, 2015—a total of 104 stories.  The vast majority of Gleaner stories during that period were on social issues, such as Sunday’s headline about the alarming number of divorces, or so-and-so needs assistance for surgery.  Social issues represented 20% of the Gleaner’s top stories between December and January.  Second was business at 12%, while crime was third at 8%.  Politics followed closely at 7%, and stories about the church represented 6% of the Gleaner’s coverage.

     The nine crime stories in the Gleaner included a story about a 10-year-old held in a lotto scam probe, the police commissioner’s crime review for 2014, two 16-year-olds held for the murder of a retired matron, credit card fraud at gas stations, lesbians reportedly targeted, the Safe Schools programme, extortion clean up downtown, and a crackdown on stolen cars.  Again, not cut-and-dried crime reporting, and also not the sensationalism that we are often accused of.
     Having had the benefit of working in a newsroom in another country for several years, as well as anchoring a Caribbean news programme for two years, Jamaica is not nearly as guilty of sensationalizing nor over reporting crime as is believed, or as compared to other countries in the region.  In Belize, for example, every murder makes the news, and it almost always leads.  Belize’s murder rate is alarming, coming in at number-4 in the world in 2014, just behind Jamaica.  Of course, because of its much smaller population, even though the murder rate is almost comparable, the actual number of murders is a lot less.
     Still, the treatment of murder is also a lot different.  Belizean news is notorious for showing gory images of dead bodies.  It is not unusual to turn on the nightly news and see a bloody body on the street, in a drain, slumped over a veranda, still oozing blood from the clearly visible gunshot wounds.  Of course followed by an interview with the grieving mother forcing words though her tears.  And then an interview with the lead detective about what he or she believes happens.  It is the same in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Gruesome images are broadcast and published uncensored.  I’m not supporting that type of reporting.  The media in those countries have been strongly criticized for those strategies, and I personally have never been a fan of that type of journalism.  I’m just saying that Jamaica really is not that bad.
     I remember when I first began working in a newsroom in Jamaica, that was at CVM TV.  It was probably my first week on the job and I was going through the police reports.  I came across three separate murder stories and instinctively began working on them.   I was shocked when none of them made the news.
     Another early experience in Jamaica that I remember vividly was being sent on an assignment to March Pen Road.  I was casually told by my editor to collect a bullet proof vest at the security gate.  I was alarmed, and even though—thankfully—nothing happened, it hit home to me how real the crime situation was and still is in Jamaica.  Yet, contrary to public perception, it does not get the proportional prominence in the news that it deserves.  That may be in large part because it’s been so bad for so long that many Jamaicans suffer from crime fatigue.  We just don’t want to hear about it any more.
     But should we simply sweep the crime issue under the rug just because people are tired of it?  If crime continues to be one of the top issues facing the nation, does it not deserve proportional attention in the news?  I took a look at some of the Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson polls over the past few years.  Between 2006 and 2010, Jamaicans ranked crime as the number-1 issue facing the country.  Crime fell to the number-2 issue in 2011, behind unemployment.  It may be more than a coincidence that a downward trend in crime began in 2010 and has continued to this day.  Jamaicans’ concern about crime has fallen as the numbers have fallen, however, crime still remains among the top 3 issues of concern.
     My point is this—you can’t continue to say that crime is such a big national problem, yet complain that the media is giving it too much attention.  Crime deserves the coverage and prominence that Jamaican media assign to it, and more!  There are media houses in Jamaica that don’t cover crime at all, as policy.  Others under-report, as evident by the content analysis I’ve presented this morning.  This is not a good thing, no matter how desensitized and crime fatigued we have become.  The media must continue to shine a light on this major issue, until we’re no longer in the top five, or ten or one-hundred countries in the world for violent crime.  Until a murder is once again such an extraordinary and shocking thing that no one questions its relevance in the news.

And that's MY perspective!