Human rights groups worried

Tivoli complaints raise concerns of possible abuse in pending operations to route criminals

TWO women walked into an outpost of the Public Defender’s office set up in Tivoli Gardens to document complaints following last month’s bloody clashes between members of the security forces and gunmen loyal to alleged drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

Their complaints: Their homes, a recording studio and other items had been deliberately damaged by members of the security forces in their effort to capture gunmen and recover illegal weapons.

Within a few minutes last Friday, the complainants — who remained courteous while relating their ordeal in an animated fashion to one of the young women charged with recording the complaints — were out the doors, making way for another woman.

They are not the first with reason to visit the outpost since its establishment in the wake of the operations that began on Monday, May 24 to apprehend Coke and restore law and order to the community that had been lined with booby-trapped barricades, nor were they last for the day.

Dozens of people have passed through this office with varied complaints against members of the security forces.

“We have had reports of extrajudicial killings, police excesses, including damage to property and abuse,” Public Defender Earl Witter told the Observer on Friday, while declining to give details of the complaints or figures.

These widely reported complaints are of “grave concern” to the island’s human rights groups, which have made heavy weather over the 73 civilians reported killed during the operation. A soldier was also killed in the operation and two police officers were shot dead by gunmen on Mountain View Avenue on the night of May 23 as gunmen loyal to Coke staged co-ordinated attacks on agents of the State across Kingston. Approximately 50 civilians and security personnel were injured during the three days of violence.

But the rights groups’ concerns have been further heightened with the recent announcement that the operations within Tivoli Gardens would be replicated in other communities to route dons who, and criminal gangs that, have been responsible for the nation’s crippling murder/crime rate for the past several decades.

Abuse and excesses by members of the security forces have been well documented by the groups, which have for years been speaking out against incidents of human rights breaches.

“The security forces do not have a very good record,” Susan Goffe, spokesperson for Jamaicans For Justice, said on Friday.

“Since we have had accounts of abuse during this operation, it is a concern for us. Members of the security forces do act outside of the law, do abuse the rights of citizens and there is a need to make it clear that this is not acceptable either by the hierarchy of the force or by the political directorate,” said Gaffe.

Jamaicans For Justice has had “reassurances” from both the military and the police force that the rights of citizens would be respected, but Goffe said that the concerns of the organisation have not abated.

Enamoured by the operation in West Kingston, and backed by swelling public support, the Bruce Golding administration announced that security personnel would be taking back troubled communities from criminals.

The operation in Tivoli Gardens, triggered by public pressure on the administration, started out as an effort to apprehend Coke, who is wanted in the United States on drug- and gun-trafficking charges, but quickly morphed into an all-out assault on criminality after the security forces responded to the unprovoked attacks.

“It is the beginning of a concerted effort to dismantle the aggressive criminal networks that have embedded themselves in communities in many urban areas and even in some rural communities,” the prime minister said during an address to Parliament on June 1.

“It is a campaign that will be sustained and intensified. It is a campaign that will target criminal gangs wherever they exist, irrespective of their political alliances or whether they have any such alliances,” Golding added.

Security Minister Dwight Nelson is quoted in a recent report as saying that communities in Clarendon, St James and other parts of Kingston and St Andrew would be targeted next.

“I don’t think that the Rambo approach works, even during slavery, because you still had rebellion, you still had protests, you still had people seeking to have their human rights respected,” said Yvonne McCalla-Sobers of the group Families Against State Terrorism.

McCalla-Sobers, who said she toured Tivoli Gardens in the aftermath of the fighting, said she saw damage to people’s property, blood that indicated that people had been killed inside of houses and heard a number of stories, which she could not independently verify, of people being killed while in custody of the police.

She implored the security forces to act “strategically” and “smart” to “outsmart” the criminal organisations being targeted.

“If this is what they are going to do in the other communities, I would be very alarmed,” she said. “We don’t need to go in and create more alienation for young people and more reproach for the State. Do we want more people being alienated from the formal system? I don’t think we do.”

Nancy Anderson of the Jamaican Council for Human Rights said the security forces should adhere to the law and respect the rights of citizens in conducting their duties.

But on Friday, Glenmore Hinds, the acting deputy commissioner of police in charge of crime, defended the constabulary’s human rights record.

“The Jamaica Constabulary Force has a very robust human rights policy that we adhere to,” said Hinds. “All our officers and men are briefed daily. Every time they are assembled for duty they are briefed on the need to show respect for the rights of persons.”

Asked what lessons have been learnt from the operation in Tivoli Gardens that would be employed to reduce abuse in the pending operations, Hinds declined to answer, noting that these were operational details. But he assured that the police have always acted in a way that ensured the safety of law-abiding citizens.

“The truth is, this is a battle, the likes of which Jamaica has never seen, and I don’t think that is much appreciated,” said Hinds. “It’s a credit to the security forces that more people were not killed.”

On Thursday last week, Witter lashed out at the police high command for what he said was a lack of attention being given to crime scenes where alleged extrajudicial killings took place during the Tivoli operation.

He said the scenes have not been properly preserved and that he had been receiving reports from residents, whose homes still contain body matter from deceased persons, that they have been given the go-ahead by members of the security forces to clean the premises, which, he argued, would destroy forensic evidence.

The Office of the Public Defender is in the process of retaining the services of independent forensic pathologists and radiologists to carry out its own investigations.