Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) lead­ers end­ed their four-day sum­mit here on Wednes­day night re­it­er­at­ing their strong po­si­tion on crime and vi­o­lence in the re­gion and recom­mit­ting them­selves to the prin­ci­ples as set out in the De­c­la­ra­tion on Crime and Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Safe­ty Is­sue.

The de­c­la­ra­tion was adopt­ed last year in Trinidad and To­ba­go at a spe­cial meet­ing of re­gion­al lead­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers and the CARI­COM lead­ers dur­ing their de­lib­er­a­tions at their 46th reg­u­lar sum­mit “strong­ly con­demned” the de­vel­op­ment, pres­ence, tol­er­ance or ac­cep­tance of vi­o­lent an­ti-so­cial mu­sic and so­cial me­dia con­tent that den­i­grate women and pro­mote the use of vi­o­lence and guns.

Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell, who was added to the CARI­COM Bu­reau of Prime Min­is­ters, told re­porters that crime and vi­o­lence are a mat­ter of fun­da­men­tal im­por­tance to CARI­COM af­fect­ing “to vary­ing ter­ri­ble de­grees each of our is­lands.

‘We want to re­it­er­ate that crime, pub­lic safe­ty, and vi­o­lence is not a mat­ter for gov­ern­ments on­ly. It is not a mat­ter for CARI­COM heads on­ly, it is a mat­ter that should en­gage all of so­ci­ety…be­cause we have some per capi­ta alarm­ing sta­tis­tics”.

He said many of the re­gion’s young peo­ple were be­com­ing vic­tims of the crime sit­u­a­tion, adding it is “some­thing that we can­not be proud of”.

Mitchell warned that all the ini­tia­tives by re­gion­al coun­tries to deal with a myr­i­ad of so­cio-eco­nom­ic prob­lems could be un­done “if we do not ad­dress this tide of crime and vi­o­lence”.

He said the re­gion­al lead­ers had al­so dis­cussed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CARI­COM Ar­rest War­rant, hop­ing for its full im­ple­men­ta­tion by the time they meet in Grena­da in Ju­ly.

“As it stands now if some­one is want­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go and finds them­selves in Grena­da or Bar­ba­dos, it is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for law en­force­ment to ap­pre­hend and re­turn them on the sim­ple ba­sis that they would not have been want­ed in Grena­da or Bar­ba­dos for any crime.”

Mitchell, an at­tor­ney, said “We need to make sure that crim­i­nals un­der­stand that we will not tol­er­ate them mov­ing from is­land to is­land in the Com­mu­ni­ty to es­cape the con­se­quences of their ac­tions.

“Some of the is­lands have be­gun to rat­i­fy the doc­u­ment that is re­quired to make sure that this be­comes a re­al­i­ty and we in­tend to press for­ward ur­gent­ly with this mat­ter to make sure that it is quick­ly rat­i­fied by all mem­ber states.”

Mitchell said that there were oth­er ini­tia­tives that need to be un­der­tak­en re­gion­al­ly, rang­ing from strength­en­ing law en­force­ment to shar­ing in­tel­li­gence and deal­ing with mon­ey laun­der­ing.

“It is clear that in some of our is­lands, or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties are run like a busi­ness and so it is im­por­tant that we strength­en our abil­i­ty to in fact seize, con­fis­cate and en­sure that crim­i­nals do not prof­it from their crim­i­nal en­ter­prise.”

Mitchell said it was al­so nec­es­sary for the ju­di­cia­ry to be on board with the fight against crime, re­call­ing the re­ac­tion that fol­lowed state­ments made in Trinidad and To­ba­go last year by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and her St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines coun­ter­part, Dr Ralph Gon­salves in re­lat­ing to sen­tenc­ing, grant­i­ng of bail to crim­i­nals on mul­ti­ple re­peat charges.

“The Caribbean civ­i­liza­tion is found­ed up­on, yes the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. But the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers can­not be tak­en to mean that the ex­ec­u­tive and the ju­di­cia­ry can­not en­gage. We have to ap­pre­ci­ate our val­ues and we can’t sit idly by as heads and watch crim­i­nals who are on bail, com­mit crimes and not say this is a mat­ter that needs to be dis­cussed.

“And so as heads, we are very clear that talk­ing and en­gag­ing with the ju­di­cia­ry is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary if we are go­ing to ad­dress this is­sue of crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in the re­gion. We can­not tol­er­ate the sit­u­a­tion with crim­i­nals com­mit­ting mul­ti­ple re­peat­ed of­fences and be­ing let loose in our so­ci­eties:

Mitchell said just so that there is a com­mon un­der­stand­ing by all “it isn’t on­ly le­git­i­mate busi­ness­men, women or cit­i­zens who are mov­ing, the crim­i­nals al­so move”.

He said in the case of Grena­da …we have had high-pro­file pub­lic ex­e­cu­tions that were not com­mit­ted by Grena­di­ans. They were com­mit­ted by cit­i­zens com­ing from oth­er is­lands and so as cit­i­zens of the re­gion we have to ap­pre­ci­ate that there are in fact pro­fes­sion­al killers, hired shoot­ers and hired gun­men who ply their trade through­out the Caribbean.

“This is a sober­ing re­al­i­ty and so blam­ing heads for com­ments per­tain­ing to the need to ad­dress our sen­tenc­ing ap­proach, or ap­proach to bail is not an at­tempt by heads to in­ter­fere in the ju­di­cia­ry’s ex­er­cise of their right to ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine a sen­tence.

“But it is a recog­ni­tion that if we val­ue life, that if we val­ue pub­lic safe­ty as one of the fun­da­men­tal pil­lars of our civ­i­liza­tion, we can­not sim­ply sit idly by and slow­ly walk in­to a sit­u­a­tion where crim­i­nals have more rights than cit­i­zens and in­no­cent vic­tims”.

Mitchell said he want­ed to make the point be­cause re­gion­al lead­ers “are very clear that en­gage­ment with the ju­di­cia­ry is not in­ter­fer­ence and that re­gion­al­ly we have to have that en­gage­ment to en­sure that the ju­di­cia­ry does its part in ad­dress­ing this is­sue of crime and vi­o­lence.”

Mitchell told re­porters that an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sial is­sue, which the re­gion­al lead­ers are pre­pared not to “shy away from” re­gards the type of lyrics in songs em­a­nat­ing from some re­gion­al per­form­ers, re­mind­ing that the Caribbean has pro­duced some of the “ world’s most renowned en­ter­tain­ers” rang­ing from Ja­maica’s Bob Mar­ley to Montser­rat’s Ar­row.

“Their lyrics were al­ways in­spir­ing, up­lift­ing, fun­ny, en­ter­tain­ing. But they nev­er pro­mot­ed vi­o­lence. They nev­er en­cour­aged vi­o­lence, they nev­er glo­ri­fied vi­o­lence, they nev­er den­i­grat­ed women and we have to ac­cept …that there has emerged a trend in our en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor…that glo­ri­fies vi­o­lence, glo­ri­fies crim­i­nal­i­ty”.

He said that while re­gion­al lead­ers were not in­clined to pre­vent artis­tic rights and ex­pan­sion of the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try “all so­ci­eties have to de­ter­mine what are our val­ues.

“We have to as­cer­tain pro­mot­ing vi­o­lence, glo­ri­fy­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty is to be nor­malised, is to be­come main­stream. Heads are clear it is not and so we are un­re­served in our con­dem­na­tion we as a so­ci­ety must there­fore work with the enor­mous tal­ent that we have in the re­gion…to pro­mote and de­vel­op pos­i­tive con­tent that re­flects the true essence and val­ues of Caribbean civ­i­liza­tion,” Mitchell told re­porters.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Feb 29, CMC

CMC/pr/ir/2024