JFJ’s DEMONSTRATION FIZZLES:

Amnesty International has released its 2011 death penal­ty report. In its report Amnesty crows that the Caribbean is what it calls an Execution free zone. At the same time Amnesty International is cel­e­brat­ing the fact that not one mur­der­er has been exe­cut­ed in the entire car­ribean which is becom­ing a mur­der zone, it’s sur­ro­gate Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) held a ral­ly denounc­ing the Jamaican Police for killing heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals who con­front them in vio­lent encoun­ters from day-to-day.

Death penal­ty 2011: Alarming lev­els of exe­cu­tions in the few coun­tries that kill 

Countries that car­ried out exe­cu­tions in 2011 did so at an alarm­ing rate but those employ­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have decreased by more than a third com­pared to a decade ago, Amnesty International found in its annu­al review of death sen­tences and executions.
Only 10 per­cent of coun­tries in the world, 20 out of 198, car­ried out exe­cu­tions last year.
People were exe­cut­ed or sen­tenced to death for a range of offences includ­ing adul­tery and sodomy in Iran, blas­phe­my in Pakistan, sor­cery in Saudi Arabia, the traf­fick­ing of human bones in the Republic of Congo, and drug offences in more than 10 countries. 
Methods of exe­cu­tion in 2011 includ­ed behead­ing, hang­ing, lethal injec­tion and shooting. 
Some 18,750 peo­ple remained under sen­tence of death at the end of 2011 and at least 676 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed worldwide.
But these fig­ures do not include the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions that Amnesty International believes were car­ried out in China, where the num­bers are suppressed.
Nor do they account for the prob­a­ble extent of Iran’s use of the death penal­ty – Amnesty International has had cred­i­ble reports of sub­stan­tial num­bers of exe­cu­tions not offi­cial­ly acknowledged. 
 “The vast major­i­ty of coun­tries have moved away from using the death penal­ty,” said Salil Shetty Secretary General of Amnesty International. 
“Our mes­sage to the lead­ers of the iso­lat­ed minor­i­ty of coun­tries that con­tin­ue to exe­cute is clear: you are out of step with the rest of the world on this issue and it is time you took steps to end this most cru­el, inhu­man and degrad­ing punishment.”
In the Middle East there has been a steep rise in record­ed exe­cu­tions – up almost 50 per cent on the pre­vi­ous year. 
This was due to four coun­tries – Iraq (at least 68 exe­cu­tions), Iran (at least 360), Saudi Arabia (at least 82) and Yemen (at least 41) – which account­ed for 99 per cent of all record­ed exe­cu­tions in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise in Iran and Saudi Arabia alone account­ed for the net increase in record­ed exe­cu­tions across the world of 149, com­pared to 2010. 
Thousands of peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in China in 2011, more than the rest of the world put togeth­er. Figures on the death penal­ty are a state secret. Amnesty International has stopped pub­lish­ing fig­ures it col­lects from pub­lic sources in China as these are like­ly to gross­ly under­es­ti­mate the true num­ber. The orga­ni­za­tion renewed its chal­lenge to the Chinese author­i­ties to pub­lish data on those exe­cut­ed and sen­tenced to death, in order to con­firm their claims that var­i­ous changes in law and prac­tice have led to a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the use of the death penal­ty in the coun­try over the last four years. In Iran, Amnesty International received cred­i­ble reports of a large num­ber of uncon­firmed or even secret exe­cu­tions which would almost dou­ble the lev­els offi­cial­ly acknowl­edged. At least three peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in Iran for crimes that were com­mit­ted when they were under 18 years of age, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. A fur­ther four uncon­firmed exe­cu­tions of juve­nile offend­ers were report­ed there, and one in Saudi Arabia. The United States was again the only coun­try in the Americas and the only mem­ber of the G8 group of lead­ing economies to exe­cute pris­on­ers – 43 in 2011. Europe and for­mer Soviet Union coun­tries were cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment-free, apart from Belarus where two peo­ple were exe­cut­ed. The Pacific was death penal­ty-free except for five death sen­tences in Papua New Guinea. In Belarus and Vietnam, pris­on­ers were not informed of their forth­com­ing exe­cu­tion, nor were their fam­i­lies or lawyers. Public judi­cial exe­cu­tions were known to have been car­ried out in North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, as well as in Iran. In the major­i­ty of coun­tries where peo­ple were sen­tenced to death or exe­cut­ed, the tri­als did not meet inter­na­tion­al fair tri­al stan­dards. In some, this involved the extrac­tion of ‘con­fes­sions’ through tor­ture or oth­er duress includ­ing in China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. Foreign nation­als were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by the use of the death penal­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. 
But even in those coun­tries that con­tin­ue to exe­cute on a high lev­el some progress was made in 2011. 
 In China, the gov­ern­ment elim­i­nat­ed the death penal­ty for 13 main­ly ‘white col­lar’ crimes, and mea­sures were also put for­ward to the National People’s Congress to reduce the num­ber of cas­es of tor­ture in deten­tion, strength­en the role of defence lawyers and ensure sus­pects in cap­i­tal cas­es are rep­re­sent­ed by a lawyer. In the USA, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly from a decade ago. Illinois became the 16^th state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. A mora­to­ri­um was announced in the state of Oregon. And vic­tims of vio­lent crimes spoke out against the death penal­ty “Even among the small group of coun­tries that exe­cut­ed in 2011, we can see grad­ual progress. These are small steps but such incre­men­tal mea­sures have been shown ulti­mate­ly to lead to the end of the death penal­ty,” said Salil Shetty. “It is not going to hap­pen overnight but we are deter­mined that we will see the day when the death penal­ty is con­signed to his­to­ry.” Amnesty International oppos­es the death penal­ty in all cas­es with­out excep­tion regard­less of the nature of the crime, the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the offend­er or the method used by the state to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion. The death penal­ty vio­lates the right to life and is the ulti­mate cru­el, inhu­man and degrad­ing punishment. 
 Regional sum­maries The Americas The US was once again the only exe­cu­tion­er in the Americas. A total of 43 exe­cu­tions were record­ed in 13 of the 34 states that retain the death penal­ty, a drop by a third since 2001, and 78 new death sen­tences were record­ed in 2011, a decrease by half since 2001.
The Caribbean An exe­cu­tion-free area, with the num­ber of coun­tries impos­ing new death sen­tences appear­ing to be in decline. Only three coun­tries are known to have hand­ed down a total of six death sen­tences: Guyana, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. Asia-Pacific Positive signs ques­tion­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment were evi­dent through­out the region in 2011. Not count­ing the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions that were believed to have tak­en place in China, at least 51 exe­cu­tions were report­ed to have been car­ried out in sev­en coun­tries in the Asia-Pacific region. At least 833 new death sen­tences were known to have been imposed in 18 coun­tries in the region. The Pacific sub-region was death penal­ty-free with the excep­tion of five death sen­tences hand­ed down in Papua New Guinea. No exe­cu­tions were record­ed in Singapore and, for the first time in 19 years, Japan. The author­i­ties in both coun­tries have pre­vi­ous­ly shown strong sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sub-Saharan Africa Significant progress in 2011 — Benin adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion to rat­i­fy the key UN treaty aimed at abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. Sierra Leone declared, and Nigeria con­firmed, offi­cial mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. And the Constitutional Review Commission in Ghana rec­om­mend­ed the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. There were at least 22 exe­cu­tions in three coun­tries in sub-Saharan Africa: Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. Only 14 of the 49 coun­tries in the region are clas­si­fied as retain­ing the death penal­ty. Middle East and North Africa At least 558 exe­cu­tions could be con­firmed in eight coun­tries. At least 750 death sen­tences imposed in 2011 could be con­firmed in 15 coun­tries. The con­tin­u­ing vio­lence in coun­tries such as Libya, Syria and Yemen made it par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to gath­er ade­quate infor­ma­tion on the use of the death penal­ty in the region in 2011. No infor­ma­tion was avail­able about judi­cial exe­cu­tions in Libya, and no death sen­tences are known to have been imposed. Extrajudicial exe­cu­tions, tor­ture and arbi­trary deten­tion were often resort­ed to instead. Four coun­tries – Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – account­ed for 99 per cent of all record­ed exe­cu­tions in the Middle East and North Africa. 
 The author­i­ties of Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco/​Western Sahara and Qatar imposed death sen­tences but con­tin­ued to refrain from car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. Europe and Central Asia Belarus was the only coun­try in Europe and the for­mer Soviet Union, and apart from the USA the only one in the Organization for Security and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe (OSCE), to have car­ried out exe­cu­tions in 2011, exe­cut­ing two men.[Amnesty International]

You will ask , and cor­rect­ly so, why are you post­ing Amnesty International’s data on your blogs don’t they have their own web­site? Well yes they do and you are quite right in ask­ing, but there is a rea­son that I do . I hope that you have read the entire report and as you do I ask that you look at crime sta­tis­tics in coun­tries like Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Then ask your­self what com­po­nent is miss­ing from this equation?

The com­po­nent miss­ing from the equa­tion is any men­tion of the vic­tims of crime!!!

Every year rough­ly 1600 peo­ple are con­firmed mur­dered by crim­i­nals in the Island of Jamaica , in a coun­ty 4,411 square miles and a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2.7 mil­lion these mur­der sta­tis­tics are alarm­ing. Even though Amnesty International’s num­bers do ref­er­ence the United States , of note is the fact that a large num­ber of American States do uti­lize the death penal­ty. Most states of the unit­ed states are com­pa­ra­ble and in many instances exceed the size , econ­o­my , and pop­u­la­tion of most nations in oth­er parts of the world , and many of the 34 states that do retain the death penal­ty actu­al­ly do exe­cute mur­der­ers for their crimes.

The United states based on the afore­men­tioned can­not be glossed over as a sin­gle nation , but has to be seen as 50 sep­a­rate states with dif­fer­ent sov­er­eign gov­ern­ments, even so the Federal gov­ern­ment do exe­cute crim­i­nals whom are con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in fed­er­al courts. Despite argu­ments to the con­trary States like Virginia, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida that has the death penal­ty do have few­er crimes than states like New york ‚New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia that defies the will of the major­i­ty and does not car­ry out the death penalty.

The United States has thou­sands of law enforce­ment agen­cies, police depart­ments from Compton California to the south side of Chicago, from Little Rock Arkansas to New york city engage crim­i­nals every day. Police depart­ments do not con­sult human rights agen­cies and lob­by groups about how to do their jobs, many peo­ple are killed in vio­lent con­fronta­tion with law enforce­ment each day in the United States.

Yet there are no dic­tates from Amnesty International to law enforce­ment. Why do I use the United States as ref­er­ence? The United States is the nation most look to as the bas­tion of human rights and jus­tice, the barom­e­ter by which oth­ers are judged. Yet despite mon­ey and oth­er resources law enforce­ment agen­cies are forced to kill vio­lent crim­i­nals every day. Are there instances where Jamaican cops are care­less or have engaged in instances of extra-judi­cial killings we sus­pect that there may be evi­dence of that. We have no evi­dence of it, nei­ther does JFJ and nei­ther does Amnesty International.We do know that offi­cers must do a bet­ter job with ensur­ing that no inno­cent per­son is injured at their hands.

As I write this blog there is yet to be an arrest made in the killing of 17 years old Trayvon Martin of Sanford Florida. Young Trayvon was gunned down over a month ago by a vig­i­lante for no oth­er rea­son oth­er than the col­or of his skin. There was the case of Sean Bell killed by NYC police offi­cers , Bell was out cel­e­brat­ing his bach­e­lor par­ty the night before he was to get mar­ried. The cas­es of police abuse and oth­er atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against blacks in the United States is mind-blow­ing, yet Amnesty has nev­er made one sin­gle soli­tary state­ment about the rights of those victims.

What we are say­ing to the peo­ple at Amnesty International is this poor dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple are the same irre­spec­tive of where they live. If you don’t find abuse of the inno­cent objec­tion­able in America , Canada, and Britain , then you have no cred­i­bil­i­ty to point out any per­ceived injus­tice in Jamaica or any oth­er devel­op­ing coun­try. Thanks but no thanks .

We refuse to let the argu­ment of extra-judi­cial killings be dom­i­nat­ed by those whose motives are demon­stra­bly in the inter­est of criminals.

As we have artic­u­lat­ed those who talk about extra-judi­cial killings have zero evi­dence of what they speak, their only met­ric is num­bers , which is absolute­ly not a means of mak­ing those deter­mi­na­tions. One has to be eye-wit­ness to a killing to make that deter­mi­na­tion and just being a wit­ness does not qual­i­fy one unless he/​she puts him­self in the shoe of a police offi­cer tasked with mak­ing those deci­sions of using lethal force.

There is a rea­son crime weary Jamaicans have sim­ply tuned out Carolyn Gomes and the oth­er far left bleed­ing hearts. That is the rea­son almost no one turned out for their car­ni­val act, it was a sick cir­cus and the Jamaican peo­ple treat­ed it as such , this side=show was timed to coin­cide with Amnesty’s report and it end­ed up being a colos­sal flop.

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY

Jamaicans for jus­tice issued a state­ment to the press claim­ing that they were intim­i­dat­ed because of the pres­ence of the police at the event armed with rifles»»»» Not all of the atten­tion seek­ers aligned to that groups was as out­ra­geous with their claims. The offi­cers were there for their pro­tec­tion of the same peo­ple who are per­se­cut­ing them, such is the job of police officers.

This ludi­crous state­ment bared the soul of the lead­er­ship of JFJ as a psy­chot­ic des­per­a­do group that the major­i­ty of fair and bal­anced Jamaicans final­ly and cor­rect­ly already tuned out.

Courtesy of the Jamaica dai­ly Gleaner:

As I have stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, Jamaicans do not hate police offi­cers. Our peo­ple are warm recep­tive and engag­ing , even those peo­ple with­out the ben­e­fit of for­mal edu­ca­tion are decep­tive­ly intel­lec­tu­al with incred­i­ble rea­son­ing pow­er. They demand fideli­ty and hon­esty from their pub­lic offi­cials, pub­lic offi­cials includ­ing politi­cians and police. We have a pop­u­la­tion of 2.7 mil­lion peo­ple most offi­cers are chil­dren of decent rur­al work­ing peo­ple. The atti­tudes of peo­ple out­side the cor­po­rate area of Kingston and Saint Andrew are vast­ly dif­fer­ent from those who reside in those areas.

My point in all of this is that our peo­ple want to sup­port their law enforce­ment offi­cers, I have been away from law enforce­ment for 20 years but I still mar­vel at the lev­el of sup­port I received when I served. Support which result­ed in the removal of many weapons and crim­i­nals from the streets and in oth­er cas­es may have pro­tect­ed my life from those who wished me harm for no oth­er rea­son oth­er than the fact that I was a law enforce­ment officer.

What the Jamaican peo­ple are not going to tol­er­ate is any group destroy­ing one of their insti­tu­tions which is pop­u­lat­ed by their chil­dren. They know that like their chil­dren who go astray and require guid­ance, some­times they have to hold their police feet to the fire. What they will not have, are for­eign fund­ed groups telling them their chil­dren are no good and should be dis­card­ed. Jamaicans are trau­ma­tized by crime, they need results, they will not have any­one destroy those who stand between them and those who sow death and destruction.

Officers have a duty to uphold the fideli­ty of their office,they have a duty to the oath they took, they have a duty to them­selves , their coun­try and their col­leagues to bring back respectabil­i­ty to the JCF. As we charge them to respect the rights of each and every indi­vid­ual, I chal­lenge them to refrain from brute force but to use their pow­ers of arrest to make the state­ment they chose to make. You do not need to beat some­one sense­less if he com­mits an offense, briskly apply hand­cuffs inform them of their rights and cart them off to jail. No one wants to be in jail. Use your pow­ers of arrest on all who break the laws, with­out fear or favor, but before you do that offi­cers , please know what the laws are!!!!! I urge my fel­low Jamaicans to respect the rule of law, sup­port your law enforce­ment offi­cers, if you see some­thing say some­thing, the life you save may be your own.With that said send a strong mes­sage to the for­eign inter­lop­ers that Jamaicans are quite capa­ble of gov­ern­ing them­selves, we will enact the laws we see fit and we will treat crim­i­nals the way we see fit.