JAMAICA Vs TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

The much hyped debate between the twin Island Nation of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica con­tin­ue to be a hot top­ic on social media. Jamaicans are alleg­ing foul, they say they are being tar­get­ed and treat­ed as crim­i­nals when they attempt to enter Trinidad and Tobago. Recently a group of Jamaican vis­i­tors were returned home by T&T Immigration offi­cials. That inci­dent sparked howls of con­dem­na­tion from Jamaicans at home and abroad. 

Calls range from a boy­cott of all goods from T&T to out­right war. The prob­lem for Jamaica is that this sup­posed harass­ment of Jamaicans is not con­fined to T&T , but is alleged to be hap­pen­ing to Jamaicans trav­el­ling to oth­er Caribbean Islands. Those who fol­low the news may recall the Shanique Myrie case in Barbados. The alle­ga­tions have been strong enough to prompt T&T’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to send a del­e­ga­tion, head­ed by her for­eign min­is­ter Winston Dookeran, to hold diplo­mat­ic talks with his Jamaican coun­ter­part A J Nicholson.

Dookeran then promised to allow for free trav­el into that coun­try but his fel­low par­lia­men­tar­i­an and Trinidadian secu­ri­ty min­is­ter, Gary Griffith, shot down his promise and vowed to keep out ‘undesirables’.Griffith said immi­gra­tion mat­ters fell under his min­istry and only he could make such pro­nounce­ments. He said Trinidad was not shop­ping mall.  http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​B​r​o​a​d​c​a​s​t​e​r​-​J​o​h​n​n​y​-​D​a​l​e​y​-​h​a​r​r​a​s​s​e​d​-​b​y​-​T​-​T​-​I​m​m​i​g​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​a​n​d​-​C​u​s​t​o​m​s​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​_​1​5​7​5​3​932.

Clearly that state­ment did noth­ing to smooth ruf­fled feath­ers in Kingston, yet it under­lined what is a much deep­er issue than most Jamaicans will hon­est­ly admit to. Since the start of this year anoth­er Jamaican has com­plained of being harassed by Trinidadian immi­gra­tion offi­cials. Broadcaster and come­di­an Christopher ‘Johnny’ Daley claimed to have been mis­treat­ed by air­port offi­cials. Daley claim he and his wife were sin­gled out for inter­ro­ga­tion and treat­ed as sus­pects the minute offi­cials real­ized they were Jamaicans. Daley post­ed details of his alleged ordeal on his Face/​Book page. In his post the Jamaican had this to say. “She seemed quite dis­ap­point­ed and annoyed that she found noth­ing alarm­ing in our lug­gage and then she did the most ridicu­lous thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. She asked if I was wear­ing two trousers (remem­ber I live in the trop­ics ) to which my response was an obvi­ous no. Without hes­i­ta­tion she instruct­ed me to go to a room with the two thug-look­ing men (police).The Trinidad air­port per­son­nel seem to per­son­al­ly enjoy drag­ging us through the mud of their sys­tem. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​B​r​o​a​d​c​a​s​t​e​r​-​J​o​h​n​n​y​-​D​a​l​e​y​-​h​a​r​r​a​s​s​e​d​-​b​y​-​T​-​T​-​I​m​m​i​g​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​a​n​d​-​C​u​s​t​o​m​s​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​_​1​5​7​5​3​932

Whether every­thing this char­ac­ter Johnny Daley said he and his wife endured is true or not , we see that he has scant regard for law-enforce­ment. That is evi­dent in his choice of words, it’s a Jamaican char­ac­ter­is­tic which is often­times export­ed to oth­er shores to their utter detri­ment. Law enforce­ment does not take kind­ly to be dis­re­spect­ed. The Jamaican went at length detail­ing his ver­sion of what tran­spired. The Article was fol­lowed with a long list of knee-jerk respons­es call­ing again for a ban on Trinidadian products .

Every time there is a flare-up, we hear the same calls. Yet Jamaica’s mar­kets are flood­ed with prod­ucts from the twin Island Republic. If Jamaicans are so gung-ho about boy­cotting Trinidadian goods all they have to do is stop buy­ing them. What’s left on shelves would rot and there would be no more con­tain­ers being off-loaded from Trinidad. 

So it seem these calls are noth­ing more than attempts to blow off steam, while they con­tin­ue to con­sume prod­ucts from T&T. What Jamaicans will not face up to is the depths to which we have sunk, or acknowl­edge it is their behav­ior which pre­cip­i­tates the kind of atti­tudes being direct­ed against our peo­ple in gen­er­al. I am not par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful about what any­one say about what I write about this issue. I am sure there will be many who have a host of neg­a­tives to say about me and of course Trinidad, oth­er nations and any­one who do not get on the howl­ing train.

In fact they will con­tin­ue to ignore Jamaica’s con­tri­bu­tion to this sense of being sin­gled out for neg­a­tive treat­ment. It is the same way they pre­tend that the mur­der­ing degen­er­ate demons who each have mul­ti­ple mur­ders to their dubi­ous cred­it, are some­how being set upon by the wicked police. Every low life who meets his mak­er was a choir-boy who was on his way to being a Doctor. Never mind that the streets knows him by an alias sig­ni­fy­ing his depraved indif­fer­ence to human life.

At what time will Jamaicans stop blam­ing oth­ers for their own doings. At what stage will they rec­og­nize that peo­ple are turned off by the dis­re­spect­ful, loud,crass,ignorant, arro­gant behav­ior they dis­play , even if they are guilty of the same vices? Trinidad and Tobago is rival­ing Jamaica in homi­cides, whether we believe they are hyp­ocrites, or that they pre­tend they are bet­ter than us is imma­te­r­i­al. They have a right to pre­vent who they don’t want in their coun­try from enter­ing. News to Jamaicans who have their panties in a bunch, “do not trav­el to Trinidad and Tobago”. Yes there are Caricom Regulations which dic­tates how Caricom mem­bers should be treat­ed when they trav­el to mem­ber states. What Jamaicans are not rec­og­niz­ing is that each mem­ber state’s Constitution trumps Caricom treaties. The rhetoric of T&T’s National Security Minister Gary Griffith is a sharp reminder of that fact.

Jamaicans may con­tin­ue to grand­stand and pon­tif­i­cate, arro­gant­ly blovi­at­ing about boy­cotts or we can start to change our atti­tudes. We can address our crime sit­u­a­tion and the way we are seen respond­ing to crim­i­nal­i­ty. We can rec­og­nize that oth­er coun­tries val­ue the rule of law, despite their crime stats. And most of all they sup­port their law-enforce­ment offi­cials. Most Jamaicans believe they are above laws. They go out of their way to be dis­re­spect­ful to law enforce­ment offi­cers at home. If they do not want to be searched and spo­ken to, stay home. Some deserve to be tak­en down a peg or two, if it takes oth­er coun­tries to do it then so be it.