Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness has de­fend­ed his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s con­tin­ued use of States of Emer­gency as a crime fight­ing tool fol­low­ing crit­i­cism from the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights (IACHR).

Last week, the IACHR called on the Hol­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion to en­sure that mea­sures used to fight and pre­vent crime are im­ple­ment­ed in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights stan­dards.

The com­ment was made in the af­ter­math of the im­po­si­tion of a State of Emer­gency in the south­ern parish of Claren­don last month, in re­sponse to a gun at­tack dur­ing which eight peo­ple were killed and nine oth­ers wound­ed.

Speak­ing at the re­tire­ment func­tion for a se­nior mem­ber of the po­lice force, Hol­ness agreed that every­thing must be done to pro­tect the rights of all cit­i­zens and as­sert­ed that this has been re­in­forced to mem­bers of the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force.

“In the trans­for­ma­tion of the Ja­maica Con­stab­u­lary Force, every of­fi­cer will tell you that in their train­ing, re­spect for cit­i­zen’s right, re­spect for hu­man rights, in­clud­ing in our op­er­a­tions … I urge the JCF to con­tin­ue on this path to show the world that we don’t need to be told to re­spect hu­man rights, it is some­thing that is en­grained in us,” the Ja­maica PM as­sert­ed.

“But you know what is miss­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion? Is the re­spect for the rights of the vic­tims,” he stat­ed.  “No one speaks about the rights of the vic­tims. Those fam­i­lies who have lost their loved ones. No in­ter­na­tion­al agency is com­ing to say pro­tect the rights of the cit­i­zen.  None.”

PM Hol­ness said when crime gets above the ca­pac­i­ty in de­vel­oped coun­tries, those gov­ern­ments use ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers with­out ex­ter­nal crit­i­cism.

“We have a sit­u­a­tion here, that for many years it has been over and above our in­ves­tiga­tive ca­pac­i­ty. Over and above the abil­i­ty to put boots on the ground in the chal­lenged com­mu­ni­ties,” he point­ed out.

“What has the Gov­ern­ment done in the last eight years? We have been build­ing ca­pac­i­ty, so we don’t re­ly on SOEs. In the last three years, the num­ber of gangs brought to the courts and the num­ber of gangs that have been dis­man­tled, has been more than in the last 30 years. All ma­jor crimes are down by 20 per­cent,” PM Hol­ness not­ed.

He added: “So, I want Ja­maicans to un­der­stand, that your gov­ern­ment is act­ing in your best in­ter­est and those who don’t un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing in Ja­maica should get the right in­for­ma­tion be­fore they speak, and sup­port the gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica in en­sur­ing that our cit­i­zens are safe and we will not re­lent against the crim­i­nals,” he said. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)