JAMAICA: A LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE? HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS UNDER THE STATE OF EMERGENCY
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manner prejudicial to the public safety, or b) has committed or is about to commit an offence against these Regulations”. 50 Law enforcement officials (and some others) were empowered to detain people for 24 hours. Detentions could be extended for up to five days by a Resident Magistrate or a police officer with the rank of Deputy Superintendent or above, seemingly for any reason, and then for a further five days, if it was believed that further enquiries were needed. 51 The Emergency Powers Regulations also authorized the security forces to “take photographs, descriptions, measurements and fingerprints of any person” during their detention and to keep this information after the person had been released. 52 Many people told Amnesty International that this process of fingerprinting, photographing, and recording of personal details, which was systematically applied to every individual detained, was referred to by law enforcement officials as “being processed”. Individuals could be detained indefinitely under administrative orders issued by the Minister of National Security if the Minister was “satisfied” that the person was “concerned in acts prejudicial to public safety or public order or in the preparation or instigation of such acts” and that it was therefore “necessary to exercise control over that person”. 53 The Emergency Power Regulations stated that a Review Tribunal would be established to hear objections to such detention orders. 54 The vast majority of those detained, whether under the emergency powers granted to law enforcement officials or under detention orders issued by the Minister of National Security, were released without charge. On 28 May, the police stated that of the 700 people detained up to that point, 694 had been released. 55 On 20 July 2010, responding to questions in Parliament, the Prime Minister said that up to 14 July, 4,181 people had been detained, 83 per cent of whom had been “processed” and released without charge. 56 According to reports received by Jamaican human rights organizations and lawyers, during the security forces raids on inner-city communities, the authorities took into custody nearly all the young men they could find. Indeed, it appeared that most of the thousands of people from marginalized communities taken into custody under emergency powers were not suspected of any particular offence, but were simply “scraped up” as part of a mass “processing” campaign. According to Jamaican human rights organizations and lawyers, the practice of arresting dozens of people not suspected of any crime and purely for the purpose of “processing” them did not begin or end with the state of emergency. They said that this practice had already existed to some extent before the state of emergency was declared and that it was still in widespread use in some communities after the end of the state of emergency. It also appears that the government has retained vast quantities of information collected through “processing” during the state of emergency, without giving any rationale for doing so. Concerns were expressed that people who had been arbitrarily detained under the special powers granted during the state of emergency are now being labelled as people “previously known to the police” and that this can be used to facilitate subsequent arbitrary actions against them.
Index: AMR 38/002/2011
Amnesty International May 2011