Jamaicans Bury Their Heads As A Strategy For Dealing With Crime.….

10734218_10203187417145913_1187502936954276739_n-e1456464036486-64x90

It’s not the first time that a coun­try has issued a trav­el advi­so­ry against anoth­er and it cer­tain­ly won’t be the last . So it comes as no sur­prise that Canada issued a trav­el advi­so­ry to it’s cit­i­zens wish­ing to vis­it Jamaica.
The sil­ly reac­tion of many Jamaicans to this rou­tine advi­so­ry by Canada to the Island’s crime prob­lem should come as no sur­prise either.
trav­el warn­ing, trav­el alert, or trav­el advi­so­ry is an offi­cial warn­ing state­ment issued by a gov­ern­ment agency to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the rel­a­tive safe­ty of trav­el­ling to or vis­it­ing one or more spe­cif­ic for­eign coun­tries or destinations.

In oth­er words it is the duty of Governments to warn their nation­als trav­el­ing to oth­er coun­tries of the risks and pos­si­ble dan­gers they may encounter and and how to nav­i­gate those risks. A trav­el advi­so­ry is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than a trav­el ban, which ulti­mate­ly pre­vents peo­ple from trav­el­ling to cer­tain coun­tries for what­ev­er reason.
Canada recent­ly issued a trav­el advi­so­ry to it’s cit­i­zens trav­el­ling to Jamaica, the advi­so­ry not the first ‚warned Canadians how to pro­tect them­selves while on the Island. In 2007 Canada issued a sim­i­lar advi­so­ry to its cit­i­zens lead­ing up to the August 27th gen­er­al elec­tions on the Island.
The advi­so­ry warned that “Canadians in Jamaica should main­tain a high lev­el of per­son­al secu­ri­ty aware­ness,” . “Canadians should avoid demon­stra­tions at all times and not attempt to pass through road­blocks, should they occur,”>
The advi­so­ry went on to state that although the two pre­vi­ous nation­al elec­tions were rel­a­tive­ly peace­ful , elec­tions in the 1980’s were vio­lent affairs.
Additionally it added that Jamaican offi­cials them­selves had advised that there is poten­tial for vio­lence and dis­tur­bances dur­ing that year’s elections.

It is there­fore a bit curi­ous that Jamaicans would have a prob­lem with Canada tak­ing steps to warn it’s nation­als of the risks inher­ent in trav­el­ling to Jamaica or any oth­er place for that mat­ter , par­tic­u­lar­ly when they just recent­ly lost one of their cit­i­zens and the United States recent­ly lost two aid work­ers just weeks apart to vio­lent crime.
THIS IS IT
There is no nation­wide advi­so­ry in effect for Jamaica. However, you should exer­cise a high degree of cau­tion due to the high lev­el of vio­lent crime. https://​trav​el​.gc​.ca/​d​e​s​t​i​n​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​j​a​m​a​ica.

A trav­el advi­so­ry is not a per­son­al vendet­ta which larg­er nations have against their much poor­er weak­er neigh­bors. They are not Capitalistic tools used to pun­ish small­er coun­tries which does not do larg­er nation’s bid­ding (though they can be).
Canada does not have a sin­gu­lar focus on Jamaica as some seem to believe, as such Jamaicans can look at the link pro­vid­ed in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, that it’s noth­ing personal .
Canada has an A‑Z trav­el advi­so­ry on lit­er­al­ly all nations on Earth . Relax Jamaicans the world is not out to get you.
In fact the Jamaican Government would be derelict in it’s duty to Jamaicans look­ing to trav­el if it does not have it’s own trav­el advi­so­ry which informs Jamaicans on how to be safe while trav­el­ing abroad.
Jamaica is absolute­ly free to include Canada and all oth­er coun­tries which have issues which should be raised a s a mat­ter of precaution.

There is a con­found­ing prac­tice among some Jamaicans to cir­cle the wag­ons and become defen­sive when­ev­er any­one point to the excep­tion­al­ly high crime rate on the Island .Cursing and berat­ing even Jamaicans who are uncom­fort­able with crime. I see this issue as a two-fold issue really.(1) Jamaicans react neg­a­tive­ly because they are trau­ma­tized sig­nif­i­cant­ly and would rather bury their heads and pre­tend it does not exist. Or (2) They are involved some­how in what’s going on .
To a large extent , there is evi­dence that many Jamaicans in the dias­po­ra are active­ly fuel­ing crime by send­ing back high-pow­ered weapons to the Island.
When you pre­tend that those who point out the prob­lem are the prob­lem you miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fix the prob­lem. When you cir­cle the wag­ons you end up with a cir­cu­lar fir­ing squad ‚before long you end up killing yourselves.

The Island’s crime prob­lem can­not be hid­den in the age of cell phones , the inter­net and the rapid dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion and images made pos­si­ble by a sin­gle click. There is no pri­va­cy , no hid­ing place , we live in an increas­ing­ly inter­con­nect­ed world . Pretending that trav­el advi­sories are tools designed to destroy Jamaica is the opti­mum insan­i­ty . Nationalistic pride is cool and com­mend­able but it will not fix a nation in a seri­ous state of denial about the expo­nen­tial­ly high rate of mur­der and oth­er seri­ous felonies.
It is absolute­ly mind bog­gling to see the idi­ot­ic attempts among many Jamaicans to ratio­nal­ize and device met­rics which seeks to prove that Jamaica’s crime rate is just fine. It caus­es me to won­der whether they are trau­ma­tized or sim­ply a part of the problem?

When you bury your head in the sand you expose your a** that is nev­er a good strategy.