Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-JAMAICA: A Life Savagely Interrupted

Dionne Jackson Miller

KINGSTON, Nov 21 2005 (IPS) - A high-profile human rights case here has left the government and a local lobby group apparently deadlocked, following a scathing report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that was severely critical of the government’s actions.

The case concerned a mentally ill man, Michael Gayle, who was brutally kicked to death by a group of soldiers and policemen at a police barricade on Aug. 21, 1999.

Details of the Gayle case shocked the nation when they emerged at a coroner’s inquest into the matter, including accounts of the terrible suffering Gayle underwent. After being savagely beaten by security forces, he was taken to a police station and charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest, despite his mother’s pleas for him to be taken to a hospital.

Those requests were denied until he began vomiting blood, when he was taken to the hospital, seen and discharged, still in serious pain. Gayle’s family took him back to the hospital the next day, where he was not immediately seen by a doctor until he started to vomit what was later revealed to be his own faeces, due to internal damage and a ruptured stomach caused by the beating he was given.

The local Coroner’s Court in December 1999 returned a ruling of unlawful killing against all the security personnel present at the time of the beating and recommended that they all be charged with manslaughter. The director of public prosecutions, however, later ruled that there was not enough evidence to charge anyone.

Jamaicans for Justice, a local human rights lobby group, then took the case to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, an organ of the Organisation of American States, a hemispheric grouping. The Commission recently released a report harshly critical of the Jamaican government.

The Commission found that the Jamaican government was responsible for violations of Gayle’s right to life under Article 4 of the American Convention on Human Rights, that the state violated his right to humane treatment under Article 5, including his right not to be subjected to torture, and that his right to personal liberty under Article 7 had been violated.

The Commission said that the police investigation “failed to accord with the minimum international standards governing the investigation of extra-judicial, arbitrary or summary executions”, and should have been conducted by a body independent of the police force and the army.

The report also criticised the director of public prosecutions’ actions in not bringing charges against any of the security personnel responsible. It rejected the government’s contention that the decisions of the DP cannot be questioned as the independence of the office is protected by the Jamaican constitution, and that the “international obligation assumed by a state cannot be superseded or made subject to the domestic laws of that state”.

The Commission called for the government to grant an “effective remedy” to Gayle’s family, including compensation for emotional damages suffered by Michael Gayle’s mother and next-of-kin Jenny Cameron, and an apology.

It called for the state to adopt legislative measures to undertake an impartial and thorough investigation into the human rights violations committed against Gayle for the purpose of identifying prosecuting and punishing all the persons who may be responsible for those violations; and adopting legislative measures to prevent future such violations.

Jamaicans for Justice is using the report as ammunition in its call for the government to make a proper apology to the family and increase the compensation payment of 46,000 dollars that has already been made to the family.

The government insists that it has already done or is in the process of doing everything that the Commission recommended, and has suggested that the Commission “has not fully grasped the nature of the Jamaican constitutional arrangements”.

Attorney-General Arnold Nicholson says that the government has accepted liability for Gayle’s death from the beginning and has always “sought to ensure justice” for his family.

To this end, he says, the government offered compensation to the family, and the amount paid was agreed on by lawyers representing Gayle’s family.

Nicholson also said that the government believed that a press release it had issued in March last year indicating its deep regret at the killing of Michael Gayle and acknowledging that Gayle died “due to the actions of agents of the state” served as a public apology.

Jamaicans for Justice wants a direct apology to the family, something the attorney-general has said the administration would not be averse to doing.

The government however, took issue with the Commission’s recommendations, saying that the “general approach taken by the Commission in this case is inconsistent with the rule that local remedies must be exhausted before the Commission will hear a case” as settlement negotiations were still ongoing when the case went to the Commission.

The government also says its compensation payment was made after negotiations with lawyers representing Gayle’s family, and in accordance with national laws.

JFJ says that every year the government refuses to implement the commission’s recommendations will be “another year of shame” for the country.

In an editorial, the Jamaica Observer newspaper said it was “reasonably satisfied that there is a genuine commitment on the part of critical players in the government for a return to a situation where Jamaica’s law enforcement agencies are decent, trustworthy and accountable”.

The newspaper urged to government to review its compensation claim, however, while acknowledging that some effort had been made in the matter, and called for the issues to be dealt with “without hubris or anger, but in a manner that helps to coax along this emerging maturity.”

“For the Michael Gayle killing was not only the shame of the government, it was to our collective shame,” the Observer said.