Letters & Opinion

Hypocritical Amnesty International Praises Caribbean While Staying Silent on Crime

THERE are times when the best way to figure out the purpose of an individual or organisation is to simply listen to what they say.

Amnesty International’s public statement on the virtual and most probable near-future abolition of the death penalty in the English-speaking Caribbean says everything you need to know about such an organisation.

On the one hand, it pretends to be pro-human rights and pro-justice. But on the other, it offers no solutions to the problems we face everyday.

The so-called “globalism” decried by President Trump and others is plain to see with Amnesty’s statement here.

This ivory tower organisation, while sitting high and pretty somewhere in some First World country, deigns to dictate to us in the Third World, what’s okay in regards to human rights and what’s not.

In its public statement, which is quite damning to me, of all the figures this U.N. affiliate organisation highlights, not one of them makes mention of the relative crime situations we have in each of our sovereign states.

We are sovereign, right?

Amnesty preaches about the human rights of criminals, pointing out the “mental anguish death row prisoners are subject to while facing the prospect of execution…” while failing to even mention the cases of victims of these criminals, the sorrow that they go through, the loved ones that they’ve lost, the anguish of being raped, etc.

While pretending to be so empathetic towards the ‘rights’ of all people, this so-called human rights organisation fails to mention even once, the victims of the horrors of crime. Rather, they preach to us about the human rights necessity of abolishing the just executions of the perpetrators of such crimes.

It is clear that their main goal is not the well-being of our Caribbean states, but that we all toe the line on their mission to instil chaos throughout the world. They are truly a poster child for “globalism”– that is, One World Government.

Amnesty International gleefully listed-off the greatly reduced numbers of death row inmates and death sentences passed in the English Speaking Caribbean since the last one carried out in St. Kitts and Nevis in 2008, stating that “The overall decrease in the death sentences in the region fully reflects global trends on the death penalty…” (There goes that word ‘global’ again… before going on to congratulate “those governments who have recognized the ultimate cruelty of the death penalty…”

My only wish is that those governments “recognise the ultimate cruelty” in allowing criminal elements to murder, rape and pillage law abiding civilians with impunity, without recognising that unlimited jail time, is not sufficient enough of a deterrent to reverse the rising tide of crime.

Just to take St. Lucia as an example. In 2012, 4 years after 2008, the year in which (as Amnesty gladly reminds us) the last execution took place in the English speaking Caribbean, 38 murders were recorded on island. Last year, there were 60. This year ()sop far) there have been 43 – five more than when this article was written.

The numbers continue to rise since we have effectively done away with the death penalty.

But, no matter that, Amnesty International tells us not to worry about a few measly people being murdered, in their crusade for a death penalty free world. No criminals were put to death — and that’s all the good news we need. The fact that murders continue to take civilian lives or other murderers are murdered, with apparent impunity, ought not to seem to be a concern.

As they told us in their recent statement: “The progress the world has achieved on the abolition of the death penalty since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted 70 years ago, is truly remarkable.”

Yeah! Right?

Dean Nestor is from Choiseul but from young adulthood, his years were spent in Castries. He studied at St. Mary’s College from 1999 to 2004 and later pursued a college education in English Literature, History and Sociology at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College from 2004 to 2006.

After graduating from Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, he began working as a teacher from 2009 until 2016...Read full bio...

 

2 Comments

  1. It’s a simple case of neo-imperialism. Sadly, there are locals who facilitate its implimentation. The dictates from France and others mean more to them than local needs. Why on Earth would one report his/her own country to the people who gave us, “enhanced interrogation,” “collateral damage,” “destroy the village to save it”?
    Think about it.

  2. Amnesty must feel their hands are clean. As you correctly say there is no consideration for victims of crime – Mary Francis and others seem to favour the rights of the criminal. This is so wrong and it remains a fact that justice delayed is justice denied.

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