Jamaica: 20 Dead in Political Violence

K I N G S T O N, Jamaica, July 10, 2001 -- Soldiers in trucks and armored cars took to the streets with orders to halt violence between lawenforcers and opposition party supporters that has left at least 20 people dead in three days.

Prime Minister P.J. Patterson called out the army on Mondaynight.

"The government cannot stand idly by and allow criminalelements to hold this country to ransom," he told reporters.

"There must be full deployment ... to prevent anticipated problemsand to ensure the restoration of law and order."

Step One: Kingston

It was not clear how many soldiers were involved. They mainly moved into the streets in the capital, Kingston, as helicopters hovered overhead. Patterson said they also would deploy in other hotspots around the Caribbean country. The military was given police powers, mostly to maintain cordons and enforce curfews, he added.

Leaders of Jamaica's two main political parties — Patterson and Labor Party leader Edward Seaga — each accused the other of inciting the violence ahead of general elections scheduled to take place before the end of next year.

The violence grew out of more than two months of clashes between gangs with rival political ties. Thirty-seven people were killed in those fights.

But at least another 20 have been killed since Saturday, when police and soldiers moved into Kingston's notoriously dangerous Tivoli Gardens neighborhood, a Labor stronghold.

"The police are downtown killing people, but only Laborites," said 48-year-old Beverly Brown, among 30 protesters at a makeshift roadblock in the Grant's Pen neighborhood.

Police said snipers hidden in buildings strafed the streets with automatic gunfire, and some people attacked them with homemade bombs.

Demonstrators mounted roadblocks, including in the northern tourist resort of Ocho Rios. Many said they were protesting a police crackdown on opposition neighborhoods.

Those killed in the latest fighting included two police officers and a soldier, but police have not identified any of those killed since Saturday as gang members.

Even Before the Violence, a High Murder Rate

Jamaica, with a population of 2.6 million, has one of thehighest murder rates in the world. About 530 people have beenmurdered this year.

That figure does not include about 75 people killed by policebetween January and last week — killings the police say are inself-defense and that human rights groups charge are summaryexecutions.

Patterson mounted a similar draconian crackdown two years ago,calling out the army and putting troubled neighborhoods undercurfew. The government said that it brought the murder rate down by11 percent in 1999 and that other crimes fell, including robberyand rape.

Jamaica's political history is intertwined with the gangs thetwo main parties helped organize and arm in Kingston's poorneighborhoods in the 1970s, gangs that controlled the streets atthe behest of politicians and intimidated voters at election time.

The political violence reached its height in 1980, when anestimated 700 people were killed in election-related fighting.

Then the gangs turned to lucrative cocaine and marijuana trade,making them financially independent, though most retain politicalallegiances.

On Monday, the fighting and demonstrations shut down banks,stores and other business throughout Kingston. Demonstrators alsolooted three stores in Spanish Town, near Kingston, police said.

The disturbances could hurt Jamaica's vital $1.3 billion tourismindustry, though the violence is concentrated in Kingston, nottourist resorts in the north and west.