Bob Woolmer’s murder gets police attention, but not the murder of gay Jamaicans.
The on-going Jamaican police investigation into the tragic murder of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer has shown that the island’s constabulary is capable of taking violent crime seriously – when it wants to.
For ordinary working class Jamaican murder victims, however, adequate police investigations are rare. Three or four Jamaicans are murdered every day (out of a population of only 2.6 million).
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20051104/lead/lead8.html
Kingston is one of the murder capitals of the world. Most of the victims are poor. Police inquiries are often perfunctory. The killers are rarely bought to trial.
The chances of getting justice in Jamaica are even lower if you are gay. Homophobic violence is widespread on the island; fuelled by the anti-gay hatred that is daily spewed from church pulpits, newspaper columns, dancehall music and radio stations.
On the one hand, many Jamaicans are proud of their homophobia. They defend it as part of their culture. On the other hand, the Jamaican government and police are in full-scale denial about the massive scale of queer-bashing violence.
Last month, a huge lynch mob cornered four allegedly gay men in a pharmacy store in Kingston and demanded they be handed over to be beaten to death in the street.
https://www.petertatchell.net/international/jamaicangayleader.htm
Who were these people? Just ordinary shoppers. Word spread about the presence of some “batty men” (faggots, queers, benders, poofs) and hundreds of shoppers descended on the store hell-bent on killing them.
The police eventually turned up and took the victims to safety, but not before allegedly subjecting them to a stream of homophobic abuse and bashing one with a gun butt. The mob was threatening to kill the four men. No one was arrested. They never are.
Some black Jamaicans in the UK, and their white friends, protested to the Jamaican High Commissioner in London, Burchell Whiteman. They urged Jamaican government action to remedy the culture of socially-sanctioned homophobic violence. The High Commissioner’s reply illustrates the problem. He wrote:
“I abhor abuse and harassment of any kind,” so far so good. He then rather spoiled his apparent concern by inquiring: “I should really appreciate the source of your information in support of the often repeated claim that ‘there have been a number of cases of homosexual men being battered and killed by homophobic mobs.'”
The High Commissioner appeared to imply that these claims of anti-gay violence are speculative and not backed up by hard evidence. This is, incidentally, a frequent insinuation by sections of the far left in their bid to discredit queer campaigns in solidarity with black gay Jamaicans, which they condemn as “racist” and “neo-colonialist.”
The High Commissioner and his far left apologists are in deep denial. What planet are they living on? There have been plenty of independent human rights reports corroborating the claims of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Jamaicans that they are subjected to systematic and institutional homophobic violence. They claim active police persecution and an attitude of indifference to homophobia by the Jamaican government.
The Human Rights Watch report, Hated to Death (November, 2004)
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/jamaica1104/
is one of the most damning indictments of homophobia ever recorded against a police service in a supposedly democratic nation. It includes allegations that Jamaican police officers have colluded with the murder of suspected gay men
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/jamaica1104/7.htm#_Toc87670796
According a May 2004 report by Amnesty International ( Sweden ):
“Protection (for gay people) is often denied by the police, who in many cases appear to tacitly or actively support such (homophobic) violence. Amnesty International has received many reports of police failing to investigate homophobic hate crimes. In some cases they fail even to take written or verbal reports of incidents. In many instances, the police have tortured or ill-treated LGBT victims of crime seeking assistance.”
Instead of questioning the well documented reality of homophobic violence, High Commissioner Whiteman and his government should make their country safe for its LGBT citizens. Indeed, they should crackdown on all violence against everyone.
The time has come to involve the Jamaican gay rights movement, J-Flag, and other Jamaican human rights groups, in drawing up a national plan to tackle the violent crime that blights the lives of all Jamaicans, gay and straight.
The Jamaican government could follow the positive lead of black-led government of South Africa by enacting constitutional protection against discrimination for every citizen, including on the grounds of gender and sexuality.
It could also legislate comprehensive hate crime laws to protect all Jamaicans who are at risk of harassment and violence, such as women, LGBTs and people with HIV.
Finally, Jamaica’s Prime Minister could ensure that all police officers receive training in human rights issues. This would help ensure they deliver protection, without fear or favour, to people who are threatened and attacked on account of their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and HIV status.
Jamaican police have, it seems, been robust in investigating the murder of the Pakistan cricket coach, Bob Woolmer. It is now time they showed the same resolve to bring to justice the murderers of their poor and gay citizens.