Editorial | Gangs: war within the law

Many people, including this newspaper, will welcome Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness’ signal that his proposed “global war on drugs” was intended to be conducted with respect for international law and human rights.

The Jamaican leader’s comment on this front will likely be interpreted as an effort to indicate that his idea, which he carried to the United Nations last week, be seen as a logical extension of America’s current operation in the southern Caribbean Sea, and was not intended to be executed in similar fashion.

In other words, suspected gang members, or gun and drug traffickers won’t just be just blown out of the water. They would be indicted and brought before courts of law to face justice.

Dr Holness is rightly concerned about the prevalence of criminal gangs in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Jamaica, and the dangers they pose to the social and economic stability of the region.

Indeed, with more than 30 murders per 100,000 population, Latin America and the Caribbean has the world’s highest murder rate, doubling that of Africa and over six times the global average. In Jamaica’s case, before the sharp decline in homicides over the past two years, it hovered around 50 per 100,000.

Government and law enforcement experts attributed upwards of 70 per cent of the murders to inter-gang feuds, as they engaged in reprisal killings or fights for turf, the vast majority of the killings with guns, mostly imported illegally from the United States.

Their activities undermined people’s sense of security, destabilised communities, and placed a drag on economies.

CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

The governments of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have long accepted the dangers posed by gangs as part of a network of organised crime, and have called for international support to help confront the problem. The United States, in particular, has been repeatedly called on to do more to limit the flow of firearms into the region.

However, Dr Holness has begun to pose the question of gangs as a global problem to be given the attention, urgency and treatment as the concern over international terrorism. That was how he articulated the matter at the CARICOM summit in Jamaica in July that elicited the Montego Bay Declaration on Transnational Organised Crime and Gangs, which stopped short of framing the response as a global war.

They did, however, commit to “a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system to, inter alia, address criminal terrorists with a focus on the proactive management of investigations, prosecutions, and sentencing”.

Partially to the backdrop of the roles that organised gangs are now playing in the disruption of constitutional order in Haiti, Prime Minister Holness carried to the UN his proposals of how criminal gangs should be addressed.

He told the General Assembly: “Jamaica has made significant progress in tackling gangs and reducing our homicide rate by more than 50 per cent in recent years. But we know that, unless these networks are totally dismantled, our gains remain fragile.

“This is why we call for nothing less than a global war on gangs, a coordinated international campaign to cut off the flow of weapons, money, and the influence that sustains them. This requires deeper engagement from all member states.”

Between Dr Holness’ “global war on gangs” call at the CARICOM summit and his speech to the General Assembly, America’s president Donald Trump dispatched an armada to the southern Caribbean Sea, ostensibly to go after narco-traffickers, including, the Americans say, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which Mr Trump formally categorised as a terrorist organisation, subject to the full force of military action.

However, it is widely believed that the real intent of Mr Trump’s action is to create an environment that provokes a US military intervention in Venezuela to topple the leftist President Nicolás Maduro.

The US warships, supported by jet fighters stationed in Puerto Rico, have already blown up vessels in the Caribbean Sea in the vicinity of Venezuela, killing at least 14 people, although no information on deaths was disclosed about the third event.

GUARDED PUBLIC RESPONSES

Except for Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has given full-throated support to the American deployment, regional leaders have largely been guarded in their public responses, focusing primarily on the need to maintain the Caribbean as a zone of peace.

More broadly, though, the American behaviour in the southern Caribbean Sea has been roundly criticised for breaching international law and the principles of natural justice.

The vessels, whose occupants the Venezuelans claimed either to be fishers or ordinary people going about their own business, were neither interdicted nor charged with crimes and taken to court. Instead, they were treated like combatants in a literal war, to whom adversaries owe no caution.

There are fears that this type of targeting of gangs, whether on the seas in lead territories, could encourage impunity by domestic security forces.

However, Dr Holness told the UN: “Jamaica welcomes cooperation with all partners in this fight, including the interdiction of drug trafficking vessels, provided that such operations are carried out with full respect for international law, human rights, and with the coordination and collaboration of the countries of the region.”

He, however, stressed the need for “a unified front with the same urgency, resources, and coordination the world has applied to terrorism”

“Only then can we turn the Caribbean and, indeed, the wider region, into a true zone of peace,” he said.

Dr Holness must ensure that his caveats on the engagement of the interdiction of suspected drug vessels – and, by extension, on how gangs in national territories are confronted – are widely circulated, understood and embraced.

Jamaica has a proud history of adherence to the rule of law, which must be upheld.