Freedom in the World 2002 - Jamaica

Polity: Parliamentary democracy
Population: 2,600,000
GNI/Capita: $3,561
Life Expectancy: 71
Religious Groups: N/A
Ethnic Groups: Black (91 percent), other, including white, Chinese, East Indian (9 percent)
Capital: Kingston

Political Rights Score: 2
Civil Liberties Score: 3
Status: Free

Ratings Change
Jamaica's civil liberties rating declined from 2 to 3 due to Colombian narcotics traffickers' control of the local drug trade, increasing use of the army in internal security, and the killings of more than 900 people in often politically related street crimes.

Overview

Crime dominated the news in Jamaica throughout 2001, casting a pall on the run-up to national elections to be held the following year, frightening potential foreign tourists, disrupting the local economy, and accelerating an already hemorrhaging brain drain of the country's professional class. By early 2001, Colombian drug lords had completed their efforts to cut Jamaican middlemen out of the illegal drug trade, effectively taking direct control of both the island's domestic trade and the transshipment of cocaine to countries to the north. Meanwhile, the U.S. government's annual drug war report named Jamaica as the Caribbean's leading transshipment point for U.S.-bound Colombian cocaine.

Following deadly street warfare in Kingston in July, Prime Minister Percival J. Patterson ordered the full deployment of the army to restore order, and the government budgeted $5 million on advertising in the United States, Britain, and Canada designed to shore up the vital but sagging tourism industry. (Tourism, however, plummeted again following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon. and New York City.) The rising tensions are part of a long-running feud between partisan-affiliated neighborhood gangs that also control much of the country's drug trade. Despite government efforts to improve public safety through a series of anticrime initiatives, street crime is also on the rise, with Jamaica's murder rate up more than 30 percent compared with that of the previous year. In October, Patterson reshuffled his cabinet in response to growing criticism of his government's handling of crime control and citizen safety.

Jamaica, a member of the Commonwealth, achieved independence from Great Britain in 1962. It is a parliamentary democracy, with the British monarchy represented by a governor-general. The bicameral parliament consists of a 60-member house of representatives elected for five years and a 21-member senate, with 13 senators appointed by the prime minister and 8 by the leader of the parliamentary opposition. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister, who leads the political party commanding a majority in the house.

Since independence, power has alternated between the social-democratic People's National Party (PNP) and the conservative Jamaica Labor Party (JLP). The PNP's Michael Manley, who died in 1997, was prime minister from 1972 to 1980, and again from 1989 until his resignation for health reasons in 1992. JLP leader Edward Seaga held the post from 1980 until 1989. During the 1970s the two parties helped organize and arm slum dwellers, creating rival armed gangs to intimidate voters.

In 1992 the PNP elected Patterson to replace Manley as party leader and prime minister. In the 1993 elections, the PNP won 52 parliamentary seats, and the JLP 8. The parties differed little on continuing the structural adjustment begun in the 1980s, but the JLP was hurt by long-standing internal rifts. Irregularities and violence marred the vote. The PNP agreed to address subsequent JLP demands for electoral reform. Meanwhile, the Patterson government continued to confront labor unrest and an unrelenting crime wave.

In October 1995 Bruce Golding, a well-respected economist and businessman and the former chairman of the JLP, left the party to launch the National Democratic Movement (NDM), one of the most significant political developments since independence. Golding brought with him a number of key JLP figures, including one other member of parliament, cutting the JLP's seats to 6.

Politically motivated fighting between supporters of the JLP and the NDM claimed at least ten lives during 1996. In December 1997, the PNP won a third successive victory in parliamentary elections, taking 50 seats in the lower house to the JLP's 10. Confidence in Patterson's unprecedented second full term was reaffirmed in local elections held in September 1998, as the ruling PNP gained 75 percent of the vote and took possession of the capital and all 13 rural parishes. The 1997 vote and that in 1998 were characterized by unusually low levels of political violence and were judged generally free and fair, despite a creaky electoral administration.

In April 1999, sweeping tax changes proposed by Patterson sparked a riot that left nine people dead, most killed by the police. The Private Sector Organization of Jamaica, made up of manufacturers, distributors, and exporters, has said that the island's recent economic decline, marked by a 20 percent unemployment rate, is the result of three decades of crime. The increase in violent crime is largely the work of former politically organized gangs that now operate a lucrative drug trade that is only loosely tied to local party bosses.

In 2000 Patterson promised to staunch Jamaica's "rampant criminality" by introducing new efforts to control guns, creating a new police anti-organized-crime strike force, and reintroducing the death penalty. The get-tough promises came after criticisms from key leaders of the vital tourism industry joined a crescendo of complaints from Jamaicans of all walks of life demanding an end to a more than two-decades-long spiral of mostly drug-related street crime. The fierce crime wave crippled local businesses and created an exodus of middle-class Jamaicans overseas. The subsequent decision to resume the death penalty was immediately condemned by international human rights organizations, and Jamaican lawmakers lashed out at what they called U.S. reluctance to provide real help in stemming the flow of illegal guns to the island and its Caribbean neighbors. In September 2000 Seaga accused the government of running extortion rackets and the PNP of arming "activists" – gangsters – with licensed guns, charges denied by the government. In October Patterson dismissed the head of the police Civilian Intelligence Unit, after the elite group was accused of engaging in illegal wiretapping of leading politicians, including the prime minister and senior police officials.

In 2001, Princess Cruises, the world's largest cruise line, announced that it would no longer make stops in Jamaica, citing incessant reports of the harassment of visitors, a wake-up call for the country's vital $1.3 billion tourism industry. Gang fighting in West Kingston erupted in May 2001, leaving a toll of 71 dead, and 28 others – including at least three police officers and one soldier – were killed in several days of gunfights as police and soldiers moved into opposition-held communities. Gang violence surged again in November, when at least seven people were killed in PNP neighborhoods.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Citizens are able to change their government through elections. However, voter apathy in the 1998 local elections resulted in one of the lowest turnout rates – 31 percent – in Jamaican history. Although the violence associated with the 1997 preelectoral period was significantly less than in previous years, it was nonetheless marked by thuggery on both sides, police intimidation, and large-scale confusion. Progress on electoral reform has been slow, and the municipal elections had been postponed for five years in order for electoral rolls to be updated and the voting system reformed. International concern has been expressed about candidate access to so-called garrison communities-armed political fiefdoms in 9 of the 60 parliamentary districts. Seaga's JLP controls only one, Tivoli Gardens, while the PNP controls seven and the NDM one.

Constitutional guarantees regarding the right to free expression, freedom of religion, and the right to organize political parties, civic organizations, and labor unions are generally respected.

The judicial system is headed by a supreme court and includes several magistrate's courts and a court of appeals, with final recourse to the Privy Council in London, which is drawn from members of Britain's House of Lords. The justice system is slow and inefficient, particularly in addressing police abuses and the violent conditions in prisons. Despite government efforts to improve penal conditions, a mounting backlog of cases and a shortage of court staff at all levels continue to undermine the judicial system. In February 1997 Jamaica signed on to the hemispheric antidrug strategy formulated by the Organization of American States (OAS).

Violence is now the major cause of death in Jamaica, and the murder rate is one of the highest in the world. Much of the violence is the result of warfare between drug gangs known as posses. Criminal deportees from the United States and a growing illegal weapons trade are major causes of the violence. Mobs have been responsible for numerous vigilante killings of suspected criminals. Inmates frequently die as a result of prison riots. Jamaican officials complain that the United States was flagrantly applying a double standard by demanding a full effort by them to help stop the flow of drugs into the United States, but at the same time failing to stem the flow of guns to Jamaica.

Human rights groups say that there are continuing concerns over criminal justice practices in Jamaica. In 1999, Jamaican police killed 151 suspects, and in 2000 they killed 140. Other disputed practices include the imposition of death sentences following trials of questionable fairness; deaths in custody; corporal punishment; alleged ill-treatment by police and prison wardens; appalling detention centers and prisons; and laws punishing consensual sexual acts in private between adult men. A mounting crime rate led the government to take the controversial steps of restoring capital punishment and restoring flogging. Rights groups protested both measures. Critics charge that flogging is unconstitutional because it can be characterized as "inhuman or degrading punishment," which the constitution prohibits.

In 1998, a six-month limit on death-row appeals to international bodies was adopted. Jamaica has also announced its intention to withdraw from an agreement with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the OAS that gives prisoners the right to appeal to the commission in order to remove barriers to executions. There are 600 prisoners on death row. A 2000 ruling by the Privy Council in London, which commuted the death penalty for six Jamaican inmates, said that inmates should be allowed lawyers when appealing before Jamaica's privy council, which advises on mercy pleas. It objected to a Jamaican law that gives death-row inmates only six months to have their cases heard by international human rights commissions. It also reaffirmed an earlier ruling that mandated, because of concerns about cruel and inhumane punishment, a lapse of no more than five years between sentencing and execution. The ruling prompted Patterson, a proponent of executions, to declare that it was "another compelling reason" to create a much-touted Caribbean court to replace the Privy Council. The Privy Council ruling that six men on Jamaica's death row should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, brought to a halt government plans to resume hangings, suspended since 1988.

There are an estimated 1.9 million radios in Jamaica – the highest ratio in the Caribbean – but only 330,000 television sets, and there is generally low newspaper readership. Newspapers are independent and free of government control. Journalists are occasionally intimidated during election campaigns. Broadcast media are largely public but are open to pluralistic points of view. Public opinion polls play a key role in the political process, and election campaigns feature debates on state-run television.

In 1998, a woman was for the first time elected as speaker of parliament. Labor unions are politically influential and have the right to strike. The Industrial Disputes Tribunal mediates labor conflicts.