Jamaica: A tale of two cities

Monday, October 27, 2003

KINGSTON, Jamaica: A country where murder is the fifth leading cause of death; whose capital, Kingston, has the third highest murder rate in the world; and where one out of every 106 males older than 15 is a criminal deportee from the United States, also plays host to more than two million visitors a year from around the world, spending $332.6 million.

Two weeks ago, a daylong shootout between police and gunmen in the Canterbury neighborhood of Montego Bay left three suspects dead and three officers wounded. Police detained 15 suspects and confiscated weapons, including four AK-47s, one M-16 rifle and assorted rounds of ammunition.

The tourists ferried from the airport to their resort hotels would have known nothing of the shoot-out in nearby Canterbury. Four miles separate the different worlds of hibiscus-fringed beaches and the blood and dust of Canterbury.

Just this weekend, crowds burned cars and buses and blocked roads near Montego Bay's airport Saturday to protest the killing of two men by police. Protesters set a fire at the road leading to the nearby Sandals Montego Bay resort, preventing people from entering or leaving.

However, a senior manager at the resort said all guests were safe and probably unaware of what was happening. "(Soldiers) are right down the road so we're probably the most secure hotel on the island right now," he said. 

International scrutiny of Jamaica is now intense as reformers press for Jamaica to break free of the cycle of violence, often fueled by drug trafficking and gang warfare, before these two worlds collide.

A UN report last week condemned Jamaica's record on human rights and extra-judicial killings by the police. An average of 140 people have been shot dead every year of the past decade in a country of 2.6 million, according to Amnesty, whose international initiative, Control Arms, was launched earlier this month.

A Scotland Yard inquiry commissioned by the island's authorities will soon deliver its report on the deaths of two men and two women, in May this year, at the hands of the police.

However, any real shift in civil society will depend on whether the government, and opposition, have any real willingness to act upon the report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence, Jamaica's mandate for a peaceful century and a cleaned-up justice system.  

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