Je viens de lire dans l' Economist que la
Jamaique est le 4eme pays au monde en taux de meurtre alors attention la-bas, dreadlock ou pas, les touristes etant un coup facile pour les petits criminels...
Article:
Jamaica's crime wave
Calling Scotland YardAug 11th 2005 |
PORT OF SPAINFrom The Economist print edition
A silver medallist in homicide
“MI FATHER dead, ” wails a three-year-old girl, mourning one of at least 21 people killed since April in a war between gangs in the Balcombe Drive area of
Jamaica's capital,
Kingston. Besides being terrified of the gangs, locals are increasingly angry with the island's police, whom they accuse of idling while the gunmen run rampant.
Murder is the leading cause of death for
Jamaica's working-age males and the appalling rate of killings has worsened sharply this year. Up to August 9th there were 1, 028 murders, 25% more than in the same period last year. Though comparing national murder rates is fraught with problems, a United Nations study put
Jamaica fourth behind
Swaziland,
Colombia and
South Africa in 2000. If things go on as they are,
Jamaica may soon have the dubious distinction of being at least the world's silver medallist in homicide.
Cocaine arrives in
Jamaica by speedboat, from where it is sent to America and Britain. The drugs money fuels the gangs, whose tentacles reach into local politics. In the Grant's Pen district of the capital, for instance, one gang backs the governing People's National Party while its rival supports the opposition Labour Party.
Police corruption is a serious worry. The commissioner, Lucius Thomas, has admitted that bent cops traffic in guns and drugs. More than 60 have been suspended or sacked over various offences this year.
An alarmingly high proportion of
Jamaica's shootings are by the police themselves. Eight police, including the high-profile former head of a disbanded “crime management” unit, will soon go on trial, charged over the deaths of four civilians in 2003. Carolyn Gomes of Jamaicans for Justice, a pressure group, says she has heard of nine new police killings in the past three weeks, which she cannot investigate, as “the police have locked off information”.
Acknowledging that it needs outside help, in March
Jamaica brought in Mark Shields, a top policeman from London's Scotland Yard, with experience ranging from organised crime to counter-terrorism. He will shortly be joined by four other senior crime-busters, who are currently being sought from the police forces of Britain, America,
Australia and
Canada.
Britain is especially keen to help, given the bloodshed that members of Jamaican drugs gangs sometimes cause on the streets of its cities. Britain's diplomatic mission in
Kingston is its second-largest in the Americas and most of its 125 staff have at least some crime-related duties.
Though the death toll keeps rising, there has been some recent progress. Operation Kingfish, a carefully chosen police and army unit launched last October, has with international help seized 10 tonnes of cocaine and made arrests in
Montego Bay, a centre for both tourism and drug-trans-shipment. Surveillance equipment has cut the flow of drug-carrying “mules”. New patrol boats will soon arrive to chase the smugglers. New technology for fingerprinting and ballistics and new laws on using wiretap evidence may secure convictions in cases where witnesses run scared.
Optimists say the surge in gang shootings shows how the police are winning the drugs war, forcing the gangs to fight over shrinking spoils. But Jamaicans are deeply cynical about their police. They will rightly take a lot of convincing.
