Tweet
A Tivoli enquiry would also be a waste of time
Wignall's World
Mark Wignall
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Mark Wignall
Sunday, June 19, 2011
HAVING been sufficiently informed by the perfect vision of hindsight, it has now come to us that the Dudus/Manatt extradition enquiry was the easier route instead of the nation making an incisive probe into the deaths of over 70 people in Tivoli Gardens in that fateful month of May last year.
The worst that could have happened in the Manatt enquiry route, based on our sordid history in these matters, would have been a few bruised egos of the men in suits and maybe it would have driven those who can't send an e-mail to brush up on computing 101.
To have launched an official enquiry into matters surrounding the deaths of over 70 people in Tivoli Gardens and that of chartered accountant Keith Clarke on May 27 at 18 Kirkland Close, Red Hills would also have resulted in the total exoneration of all members of the security forces. We know this because it is par for the course in Jamaica where justice is usually bought and sold behind closed doors.
Tivoli Gardens residents stage a peaceful street protest in support of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke last year May, days before the security forces went into the community to arrest the former don who was wanted by the United States. The effort to apprehend Coke resulted in a gunfight between the security forces and a militia loyal to Coke in which just over 70 people were shot dead.Doors above and slightly below Liguanea.
My friend Lloyd D'Aguilar, who was a few months ago fired from Newstalk 93 because on his programme — Looking Back, Looking Forward — he dared to interview Ragashanti, who had also just been dislodged from Nationwide, has been exhorting me who he calls, 'a progressive writer' to visit Tivoli Gardens and speak to the people there.
"Once you do that, Mark, you will get a better understanding of what really took place," he said. I have tried to explain to my friend the dilemma facing me.
First, the incursion into Tivoli Gardens by the security forces in May last year, which resulted in the deaths of at least 73 people would have required, in any self-respecting country, an official enquiry, even if all the persons killed were armed gunmen. The storming of Keith Clarke's house, miles away from the massacre in Tivoli on some pretext that it was the home of Justin O'Gilvie (Dudus' former business partner in Incomparable Enterprises) and his tragic shooting death by soldiers during which time his wife was shouting and telling them who she was -- a doctor of education, a justice of the peace — would, by itself, require an enquiry.
The fact is, in a country where human life has so little value and we are so far removed from being a civil society, at times, the choices available to us are not necessarily the ones we would lay out, if we had the power to do so.
I now find that nationally, murders have trended down more than significantly (in excess of 40 per cent) over last year and I am in no doubt that it was the ferocity of that Tivoli incursion which brought shock value to gangs throughout Jamaica that has caused the drop in the shooting deaths.
Am I then accepting that the deaths of the people in Tivoli Gardens and Keith Clarke, who was my drinking buddy, was the price paid for the success in the falling off of the murder rate? I can't do that, but what are the options available to me? Can I point to one factor outside of the Tivoli operation as being responsible for the drop in murders? Better policing? I have seen no open evidence of this although there does seem to be more policemen on the roads doing spot checks.
Although I know that Commissioner Ellington has been strident in his approach to dealing with organised criminality and gangland violence, I am not yet prepared to accept that his operational standards suddenly got better between May of last year and the present time.
My dilemma increases as I bring my focus to bear on Tivoli Gardens, long an enclave which operated by its own rules. When my friend Lloyd presses me to visit Tivoli Gardens I am forced to tell him that by my last experience with residents of that community, I have absolutely no intention of going there again.
The last time I tried to support that community I was assaulted by some residents, male and female. That was in 2005.
Why I can no longer support Tivoli Gardens
My friend Lloyd D'Aguilar, who was a few months ago fired from Newstalk 93 because on his programme — Looking Back, Looking Forward — he dared to interview Ragashanti, who had also just been dislodged from Nationwide, has been exhorting me who he calls, 'a progressive writer' to visit Tivoli Gardens and speak to the people there.
"Once you do that, Mark, you will get a better understanding of what really took place," he said. I have tried to explain to my friend the dilemma facing me.
First, the incursion into Tivoli Gardens by the security forces in May last year, which resulted in the deaths of at least 73 people would have required, in any self-respecting country, an official enquiry, even if all the persons killed were armed gunmen. The storming of Keith Clarke's house, miles away from the massacre in Tivoli on some pretext that it was the home of Justin O'Gilvie (Dudus' former business partner in Incomparable Enterprises) and his tragic shooting death by soldiers during which time his wife was shouting and telling them who she was -- a doctor of education, a justice of the peace — would, by itself, require an enquiry.
The fact is, in a country where human life has so little value and we are so far removed from being a civil society, at times, the choices available to us are not necessarily the ones we would lay out, if we had the power to do so.
I now find that nationally, murders have trended down more than significantly (in excess of 40 per cent) over last year and I am in no doubt that it was the ferocity of that Tivoli incursion which brought shock value to gangs throughout Jamaica that has caused the drop in the shooting deaths.
Am I then accepting that the deaths of the people in Tivoli Gardens and Keith Clarke, who was my drinking buddy, was the price paid for the success in the falling off of the murder rate? I can't do that, but what are the options available to me? Can I point to one factor outside of the Tivoli operation as being responsible for the drop in murders? Better policing? I have seen no open evidence of this although there does seem to be more policemen on the roads doing spot checks.
Although I know that Commissioner Ellington has been strident in his approach to dealing with organised criminality and gangland violence, I am not yet prepared to accept that his operational standards suddenly got better between May of last year and the present time.
My dilemma increases as I bring my focus to bear on Tivoli Gardens, long an enclave which operated by its own rules. When my friend Lloyd presses me to visit Tivoli Gardens I am forced to tell him that by my last experience with residents of that community, I have absolutely no intention of going there again.
The last time I tried to support that community I was assaulted by some residents, male and female. That was in 2005.
Why I can no longer support Tivoli Gardens
When I just started writing for the Observer in 1996, I was more than a bit of a romantic in supporting everything that residents of inner-city areas told me. In doing so, because those residents knew where my heart was, many of them relied on me to sell their sides of the story.
Having first visited Tivoli Gardens in 1976, long before I even thought of writing, it was something of a dare to visit and even associate with anyone who lived there.
In 1996, after I heard a report on radio that the police had shot dead some men on Albert Street in Denham Town, I visited the community after all roads were blocked.
I entered the community by driving on the sidewalk adjacent to May Pen Cemetery. In some perverse way it probably helped then that no one knew who I was, as at one stage when I could go no further on the 'banking' and had to drive on the road towards a roadblock, some fierce-looking young men approached the car and asked, 'A who yu?'
I simply told them that I wrote for the Observer and wanted to get to the truth of what took place. I was told that TV crews had been shot at.
In fact, the radio report had said that the police had encountered gunmen, they had fired on the police, the police had returned the fire, the men were shot and wounded and after being taken to the hospital, they were pronounced dead.
I had gone there because I smelled a rat. All four shot and wounded? All four eventually pronounced dead at the hospital?
My investigations indicated that the men were, at the very least, shot dead. There were drag marks on the pavement — in blood. Would the police drag a wounded man on the pavement? I was, of course, somewhat naïve to those things at the time, but by my reckoning, those four boys were executed.
Long after I had determined that the young men were indeed gunmen, but as one resident has told me, "Dem neva did have any gun dat day."
I had then spoken on The Breakfast Club and it had created quite a stir. Enough of that story though, but I should add that in the eyes of residents of Tivoli Gardens, some of whom had shot up the Denham Town Police Station (I honestly believed that was then a lie. I know better now) and those of its sister community, Denham Town, I was a hero.
In 1997, after the police had shot up the casket with the body of a Tivoli gunman named Baugh, 'war' again broke out for about four days. Tivoli gunmen and the police traded shots and four people in Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town were killed. One of the dead was a six-year-old boy who was shot while jumping up and down on his bed. At that time I examined the light-metal louvre pane where the bullet had entered and attempted to draw some parallel with the spot where the security forces were firing from. I concluded that the shot had come from the Tivoli Gardens High School.
What I did not ask myself then was this. Was there a gunman firing from the little room where the boy was?
When I wrote about that, I was seen as a hero to residents of Tivoli Gardens.
In 2001, when 'war' again broke out, I was in Tivoli Gardens for about six hours. In fact, I could not leave because of the intense exchange of gunfire between gunmen in Tivoli and members of the security forces who had surrounded the community.
When I reported on that tragic incident I was seen as a hero to residents of Tivoli Gardens.
But something happened in me after that. I began to listen to the voices of those who were saying, 'Mark, why are you supporting these people, that community?'
Prior to that I had seen Tivoli as a sort of JLP Israel surrounded by hostile PNP Arab states. Ironically, its member of parliament at the time was Eddie Seaga, a Jamaican of Lebanese extraction. Why, I said to myself, in plain language, would this white Jamaican Seaga be supporting a community of poor black people if there was not something just and right about it? What did he have to gain from it when it appeared to me that he had everything to lose from doing so?
In my mind, because Seaga was so vilified across Jamaica, maybe he needed someone like me who had a natural tendency to support 'underdogs' to support his cause.
As I dug more, my views began to change but I was faced with the embarrassment of debunking all that I had written on strongly before. As I listened and observed more I came close to a 180 degree turnaround.
What of Tivoli's new leader, Bruce Golding
In 2005, I was a guest on Cliff Hughes' TV programme and in my input I had harshly criticised the new leader of the JLP, Bruce Golding.
I cannot remember what the specific issue was, but I do remember that Golding was in the TV studios to be interviewed for the second part and, having heard what I and others had said, he was not his usual self when we greeted each other before I left the studios. To be fair, he was quite cold.
A week or so later, the police shot and killed a Tivoli gunman called 'Zion Train'. Sections of the Western Kingston community went mad!
Unsure about where I was in relation to Tivoli Gardens, I phoned a friend who had close personal contact with the community and asked if it would be OK for me to visit. He said, no problem. He was on the way there and I should meet him at the Denham Town Police Station.
I drove there and parked my car directly in front of the station but on the other side of the road. As I exited I saw that there was a demonstration at Albert Street. Residents had gathered there to protest the killing of the notorious gunman. They had placards and were in a restive mood. On the steps of the police station were policemen in full battle gear.
Before I could even cross the road, a few women in the crowd saw me and beckoned to me to come across. I took it that they were welcoming of me. As I came upon the protesting residents, the first sign that something was amiss was when one woman said to me, "Missa Wignall, a whey di b.... c.... yu a do yah?"
As I walked into the heart of the crowd and asked them in general, "Tell me exactly what happened?" one young man said to me, "Yu tink sey mi neva si yu pan TV a dis di leada. Hey bway, yu fi get a gun shot inna yu marrow!"
As the crowd pressed upon me, some of the people began to slap me in the head with the placards. As I turned, others used the wooden handles to 'jook' me in the side. It had to have been about 40 to 50 people.
As scared as I was getting I believed that by appealing to them, they would see reason. "Imagine I was here for onnu in 96, in 97, in 2001. So how come onnu a gwan so now!," I said. They pressed upon me even more as a few women, older ones, begged them to leave me alone.
It was then that two policemen with rifles came off the steps of the station and said to me, "Mr Wignall, this is getting out of hand. Come inside the station."
And my friend Lloyd D'Aguilar wants me to support them?
Tivoli residents are programmed
In 1996 when I was on the ground in Tivoli Gardens, the air was thick with fear. The soldiers were walking around crouched as if they expected gunfire to erupt at any minute.
No men were seen on the streets in any significant number but those that I did see were roughed up by the soldiers. Close to the community centre I did a little experiment with some of the women who had turned out in fair numbers.
I told them that I would be asking them questions in private and as I asked them, I did not want those who I had previously asked questions to mingle with the original group. They agreed.
As I called each one and asked, "Are there any guns in Tivoli?" each answered with a straight, believable face, "No sir, there are no guns here."
Certainly I was the fool that day.
On the day after that I was in Rema because 'war' was on between that community and Denham Town/Tivoli. To a crowd of desperado-like young men in Rema I asked the question, "Are there any guns in Rema?"
One young fellow with an evil-looking scar on his face said, "A wha type a eediat question dat. Nuff gun dey yah so!"
So, my friend Lloyd, while I believe that there had to have been excesses by the security forces in May last year, as too much hate for Tivoli Gardens had been stored up for too long, I honestly do not believe that your selective truth is listening to everything that the residents have told you.
If innocent people were shot dead by the security forces, as I believe is par for the course among them, the truth will not come by way of the soldiers and policemen, neither will it come from the residents.
So, how is the truth to be arrived at and where is the political will to sift and to determine who shot whom, who had guns firing at whom?
If a Commission of Enquiry is eventually held into the Tivoli killings, the script will read like this: The residents will say there were no gunmen firing and the security forces will say all who were killed were gunmen or supporting them. And what then?
The Jamaican society is a sick one, close to terminally ill. In large measure, in the specific instance, the residents of Tivoli Gardens have scripted their own condition by supporting wholesale criminality for too long.
Their political leaders gave them the template of 'independent criminality' many years ago, but power is vested in the hands of those who perpetrated the most foul of misdeeds. Those political leaders are the ones to go after.
Who dares to do that? Who dares to ask Eddie Seaga to explain Tivoli Gardens? Who dares to ask Bruce Golding to explain his politics, his NDM flit across the floor and his return to the very thing which he had, more than any other, condemned?
Power is secretive, difficult to hold on to, sinister and dangerous in an outsider's attempt to reduce it. It tends to draw blood and take away the breath of life.
observemark@gmail.com
Having first visited Tivoli Gardens in 1976, long before I even thought of writing, it was something of a dare to visit and even associate with anyone who lived there.
In 1996, after I heard a report on radio that the police had shot dead some men on Albert Street in Denham Town, I visited the community after all roads were blocked.
I entered the community by driving on the sidewalk adjacent to May Pen Cemetery. In some perverse way it probably helped then that no one knew who I was, as at one stage when I could go no further on the 'banking' and had to drive on the road towards a roadblock, some fierce-looking young men approached the car and asked, 'A who yu?'
I simply told them that I wrote for the Observer and wanted to get to the truth of what took place. I was told that TV crews had been shot at.
In fact, the radio report had said that the police had encountered gunmen, they had fired on the police, the police had returned the fire, the men were shot and wounded and after being taken to the hospital, they were pronounced dead.
I had gone there because I smelled a rat. All four shot and wounded? All four eventually pronounced dead at the hospital?
My investigations indicated that the men were, at the very least, shot dead. There were drag marks on the pavement — in blood. Would the police drag a wounded man on the pavement? I was, of course, somewhat naïve to those things at the time, but by my reckoning, those four boys were executed.
Long after I had determined that the young men were indeed gunmen, but as one resident has told me, "Dem neva did have any gun dat day."
I had then spoken on The Breakfast Club and it had created quite a stir. Enough of that story though, but I should add that in the eyes of residents of Tivoli Gardens, some of whom had shot up the Denham Town Police Station (I honestly believed that was then a lie. I know better now) and those of its sister community, Denham Town, I was a hero.
In 1997, after the police had shot up the casket with the body of a Tivoli gunman named Baugh, 'war' again broke out for about four days. Tivoli gunmen and the police traded shots and four people in Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town were killed. One of the dead was a six-year-old boy who was shot while jumping up and down on his bed. At that time I examined the light-metal louvre pane where the bullet had entered and attempted to draw some parallel with the spot where the security forces were firing from. I concluded that the shot had come from the Tivoli Gardens High School.
What I did not ask myself then was this. Was there a gunman firing from the little room where the boy was?
When I wrote about that, I was seen as a hero to residents of Tivoli Gardens.
In 2001, when 'war' again broke out, I was in Tivoli Gardens for about six hours. In fact, I could not leave because of the intense exchange of gunfire between gunmen in Tivoli and members of the security forces who had surrounded the community.
When I reported on that tragic incident I was seen as a hero to residents of Tivoli Gardens.
But something happened in me after that. I began to listen to the voices of those who were saying, 'Mark, why are you supporting these people, that community?'
Prior to that I had seen Tivoli as a sort of JLP Israel surrounded by hostile PNP Arab states. Ironically, its member of parliament at the time was Eddie Seaga, a Jamaican of Lebanese extraction. Why, I said to myself, in plain language, would this white Jamaican Seaga be supporting a community of poor black people if there was not something just and right about it? What did he have to gain from it when it appeared to me that he had everything to lose from doing so?
In my mind, because Seaga was so vilified across Jamaica, maybe he needed someone like me who had a natural tendency to support 'underdogs' to support his cause.
As I dug more, my views began to change but I was faced with the embarrassment of debunking all that I had written on strongly before. As I listened and observed more I came close to a 180 degree turnaround.
What of Tivoli's new leader, Bruce Golding
In 2005, I was a guest on Cliff Hughes' TV programme and in my input I had harshly criticised the new leader of the JLP, Bruce Golding.
I cannot remember what the specific issue was, but I do remember that Golding was in the TV studios to be interviewed for the second part and, having heard what I and others had said, he was not his usual self when we greeted each other before I left the studios. To be fair, he was quite cold.
A week or so later, the police shot and killed a Tivoli gunman called 'Zion Train'. Sections of the Western Kingston community went mad!
Unsure about where I was in relation to Tivoli Gardens, I phoned a friend who had close personal contact with the community and asked if it would be OK for me to visit. He said, no problem. He was on the way there and I should meet him at the Denham Town Police Station.
I drove there and parked my car directly in front of the station but on the other side of the road. As I exited I saw that there was a demonstration at Albert Street. Residents had gathered there to protest the killing of the notorious gunman. They had placards and were in a restive mood. On the steps of the police station were policemen in full battle gear.
Before I could even cross the road, a few women in the crowd saw me and beckoned to me to come across. I took it that they were welcoming of me. As I came upon the protesting residents, the first sign that something was amiss was when one woman said to me, "Missa Wignall, a whey di b.... c.... yu a do yah?"
As I walked into the heart of the crowd and asked them in general, "Tell me exactly what happened?" one young man said to me, "Yu tink sey mi neva si yu pan TV a dis di leada. Hey bway, yu fi get a gun shot inna yu marrow!"
As the crowd pressed upon me, some of the people began to slap me in the head with the placards. As I turned, others used the wooden handles to 'jook' me in the side. It had to have been about 40 to 50 people.
As scared as I was getting I believed that by appealing to them, they would see reason. "Imagine I was here for onnu in 96, in 97, in 2001. So how come onnu a gwan so now!," I said. They pressed upon me even more as a few women, older ones, begged them to leave me alone.
It was then that two policemen with rifles came off the steps of the station and said to me, "Mr Wignall, this is getting out of hand. Come inside the station."
And my friend Lloyd D'Aguilar wants me to support them?
Tivoli residents are programmed
In 1996 when I was on the ground in Tivoli Gardens, the air was thick with fear. The soldiers were walking around crouched as if they expected gunfire to erupt at any minute.
No men were seen on the streets in any significant number but those that I did see were roughed up by the soldiers. Close to the community centre I did a little experiment with some of the women who had turned out in fair numbers.
I told them that I would be asking them questions in private and as I asked them, I did not want those who I had previously asked questions to mingle with the original group. They agreed.
As I called each one and asked, "Are there any guns in Tivoli?" each answered with a straight, believable face, "No sir, there are no guns here."
Certainly I was the fool that day.
On the day after that I was in Rema because 'war' was on between that community and Denham Town/Tivoli. To a crowd of desperado-like young men in Rema I asked the question, "Are there any guns in Rema?"
One young fellow with an evil-looking scar on his face said, "A wha type a eediat question dat. Nuff gun dey yah so!"
So, my friend Lloyd, while I believe that there had to have been excesses by the security forces in May last year, as too much hate for Tivoli Gardens had been stored up for too long, I honestly do not believe that your selective truth is listening to everything that the residents have told you.
If innocent people were shot dead by the security forces, as I believe is par for the course among them, the truth will not come by way of the soldiers and policemen, neither will it come from the residents.
So, how is the truth to be arrived at and where is the political will to sift and to determine who shot whom, who had guns firing at whom?
If a Commission of Enquiry is eventually held into the Tivoli killings, the script will read like this: The residents will say there were no gunmen firing and the security forces will say all who were killed were gunmen or supporting them. And what then?
The Jamaican society is a sick one, close to terminally ill. In large measure, in the specific instance, the residents of Tivoli Gardens have scripted their own condition by supporting wholesale criminality for too long.
Their political leaders gave them the template of 'independent criminality' many years ago, but power is vested in the hands of those who perpetrated the most foul of misdeeds. Those political leaders are the ones to go after.
Who dares to do that? Who dares to ask Eddie Seaga to explain Tivoli Gardens? Who dares to ask Bruce Golding to explain his politics, his NDM flit across the floor and his return to the very thing which he had, more than any other, condemned?
Power is secretive, difficult to hold on to, sinister and dangerous in an outsider's attempt to reduce it. It tends to draw blood and take away the breath of life.
observemark@gmail.com
1 comments
Comment