Jamaica’s Leaders Silent On Mass Terror Killings..

As a kid grow­ing up in NE St, Catherine , I was moved to tears , and prob­a­bly changed for­ev­er ‚when an elder­ly man , “Mass Grampa” was bru­tal­ly mur­dered on his farm a few miles from my home.

Mass Grampa (real name has elud­ed me now ),and his wife had spent most of their lives in England and had returned to his home­land to live out the remain­der of their years

They had a decent home just out­side Linstead. Mass Grampa had prop­er­ty on which he did farm­ing in a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ty called Palm Hill.
Palm Hill adjoined my dis­trict of Bonnett.

From Monday to Friday evenings Mass Grampa toiled on his farm . He lived there in a one room struc­ture he built .
It was con­crete struc­ture that many peo­ple would die to call home.
On Friday evenings he would trav­el back to Linstead to be home with his beloved wife of many years.
Come Monday morn­ing he would be back on his farm and the cycle continued.

On his farm Mass Grampa grew acres of Gungo peas in the soft pli­ant sandy soil , he also grew coco a kind of tuber that is a Jamaican staple.
He would grow a vari­ety of oth­er crops on those open hill­sides includ­ing Tobacco and of course a lit­tle marijuana.

Mass Grampa’s one room house was perched atop a hill , on both sides of the house the land dropped away rapid­ly , iso­la­tion the struc­ture for plain view from miles around on both sides .
Because of the moun­tain­ous nature of the ter­rain, the sin­gle room struc­ture stood out for miles around like a sore thumb.
It was there in that struc­ture that Mass Grampa’s life was snuffed out in the most bar­bar­ic and grue­some way one night, all because he had some cured Marijuana in the residence .

His killers chopped him but that was­n’t enough, they ran a gar­den forth through his body, over and over again , with the final thrust they nev­er both­ered remov­ing it.
They ran­sacked the room and left.

I am unsure whether any­one was ever held account­able for his grue­some death.
Mass Grampa died because he dared to work hard.
He could have opt­ed to take it easy, he had already put in a full life’s work.
But being a man he thought he would con­tin­ue to work hard. Whether one agreed with whether he should be plant­i­ng weed is beside the point .
He should not have been killed for his own property.

Barbaric killings are not anom­alies in Jamaica.
They have been going on for decades . Several decades to be exact.
What is dif­fer­ent now than when I was a kid is the fre­quen­cy and lev­el of detach­ment with which these killings occur.
Mass Grampa may have lost his life because peo­ple were taught in the 70’s that what oth­ers have should be divid­ed up and giv­en to them who chose not to work.
As a return­ing res­i­dent Mass Grampa did not stand a chance, farm­ing a few mar­i­jua­na plants which may have yield­ed a few pounds of the weed meant he was unwit­ting­ly sign­ing his own death warrant.

ACQUIESCENCE..

I have long main­tained that the mas­sive increas­es we have wit­nessed in the Island’s vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics are a func­tion of Government and soci­etal acquiescence.
I hard­ly com­ment on indi­vid­ual cas­es in which Jamaicans are slaugh­tered, we now talk about the mul­ti­ple mul­ti vic­tim mur­der scenes.

Despite what was a demon­stra­bly vis­i­ble deter­mined and vis­cous streak in the crim­i­nal under­world , the elit­ist in the soci­ety lob­bied the Government to lay off deal­ing deci­sive­ly with crime , because they said , crime is a socio-eco­nom­ic prob­lem which will go away if peo­ple have jobs.

The only prob­lem with that lib­er­al the­o­ry is that in Jamaica, as it is in oth­er coun­tries where vio­lent mur­ders occur , they are not mur­ders com­mit­ted by a man steal­ing a bunch of Banana because he has to feed his hun­gry children.
The most egre­gious and dar­ing killings are orches­trat­ed by pow­er­ful peo­ple with mon­ey , and connections.
So while in Jamaica they wait for a mirac­u­lous respite as a result of a mirage of an eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty , mass mur­ders con­tin­ue unchecked.

Murderers push the enve­lope because they know that Government does not have the balls to do any­thing about them.
They know that politi­cians are far more focused on stay­ing on the gravy train than doing any­thing sub­stan­tive for country.
So the Militia upris­ing of 2010 against the state should have been a bell wether ‚but it wasn’t.

Many oth­er sit­u­a­tions which should have caused mas­sive alarm and a deci­sive mil­i­taris­tic response drew nary a whimper.
In June of 2012 , less than two years lat­er over 30 heav­i­ly armed men invad­ed the com­mu­ni­ty of August Town St Andrew and car­ried out a massacre.
The Government of the day did nothing !

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​2​9​39/

Since then a new admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en office , but the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it dere­lic­tion of duty has remained and may be seen as com­pound­ed on.
A sit­u­a­tion in which an entire com­mu­ni­ty take up arms against the state would have been dealt a mil­i­tary solu­tion in any oth­er country.
Not in Jamaica !!!
The Nation’s secu­ri­ty forces entered Tivoli gar­dens and annexed it , they got a com­mis­sion of Inquiry for their troubles.
Any sit­u­a­tion in which 30 men armed with auto­mat­ic weapons invade a com­mu­ni­ty and killed peo­ple would have been dealt a quick mil­i­taris­tic response, one which would have sent a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage that sim­i­lar inci­dents will be put down.

Not in Jamaica, those instances are seen as mere crim­i­nal acts.
Only prob­lem is, they aren’t !
They are larg­er omi­nous red flags of a more sin­is­ter road ahead.

So when we hear talk from politi­cians , past and present ‚about crime thriv­ing because crim­i­nals feel that there are no consequences .
They are damn right, but what did they do while they were in office.?
Did they use their office as a plat­form to speak out for the rule of law , or did they toe the polit­i­cal line?

The killings in Jamaica for the most part are decid­ed­ly not just crime.
They long ceased being just that.
This is ter­ror­ism , the out­come they desire may not be polit­i­cal as they were in the 70’s and 80’s but they are designed to sow fear.
They are designed to intimidate.

Instead of send­ing the mil­i­tary out to kill these killers the Government has decid­ed to go the oth­er direction.
That direc­tion is to fur­ther empow­er agen­cies and just about any­one who can stand between ter­ror­ists and those who would ren­der jus­tice to them.
Unfortunately for the fam­i­lies of the dead they can expect no respite from the mass killings.
There is no inten­tion to do a damn thing about them.
The Government’s focus is to con­tin­ue to empow­er INDECOM to go after the secu­ri­ty forces .
It is a con­tin­u­a­tion of Bruce Golding’s abbre­vi­at­ed tenure .
May God help the fam­i­lies of those slaugh­tered dai­ly, because the Government has no inter­est in lift­ing a finger.