Tivoli residents want int’l enquiry

Allege abuses and extrajudicial killings by security forces

By PAUL HENRY, Observer staff reporter, henryp@jamaicaobserver.com

Thursday, July 08, 2010

TIVOLI Gardens residents, led by attorney Hannah Harris-Barrington, are seeking an international enquiry into May's security incursion into the West Kingston community.

The operation to apprehend former don and accused drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke left 73 people dead.

Some 58 civilians and security personnel were injured in the three-day clash that started on May 29.

Immediately after the fighting settled, reports started to surface of wide-scale police abuses and extrajudicial killings.

There were also reports of significant damage and theft of property, allegedly by members of the security forces. Outposts of the Office of the Public Defender set up in the community have recorded more than 700 complaints from residents.

Harris-Barrington told the Observer yesterday that more than 200 signatures have been secured from residents as they push to have the international community scrutinise the operation.

"A lot of people have suffered down there and we want an international enquiry into the matter," Harris-Barrington told the Observer. "Atrocities have been committed."

She said that the drive would be continued to collect more signatures and that representatives are now in England rallying Jamaicans living there to join the cause.

There have been numerous calls for the Golding-led administration to hold an enquiry into the matter.

This is now Harris-Barrington's second tussle with the State in relation to the West Kingston saga.

Just last month, the lawyer filed an action for Judicial Review of the Government's decision on May 23 to call a State of Public Emergency, limited to Kingston and St Andrew, in response to chaos caused by marauding gunmen loyal to Coke, who set fire to the Hannah Town and Darling Street police stations during the upheaval that crippled the business district of downtown Kingston and resulted in millions of dollars in damage and loss of sales.

The suit was filed on behalf of the Portland-based group Jamaican Forum for Human Rights, of which Harris-Barrington is president, and names Prime Minister Bruce Golding, Attorney General Dorothy Lightbourne, Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn, Governor General Sir Patrick Allen and former Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardly Lewin as defendants.

The claimants are Dr Clarice Ledwidge, Bishop of the Ministries of Jessica Clarice Evangelist in Hector Rivers Portland; Tivoli Gardens resident Annett Marshall; and other concerned citizens.

The application for Judicial Review will not be heard before September.

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