Garth Rattray

WE OFTEN see people on television lamenting the bloodshed in their war-torn communities. In spite of our media-evoked sympathy, there remains some abstractness until we look into their weary and frightened eyes and hear first-hand about their daily hellish circumstances. Thanks to years of violent adversarial politics, incompetence and corruption, all Jamaicans live in the shadow of fear. And untold numbers of innocent men, women and children are being held virtual hostages by ruthless gunmen within their communities.

In the '70s, a very good friend of mine enlisted as a Jamaica Defence Force officer. He told me how he rode in an armoured personnel carrier on to Jacques Road (off Mountain View Avenue) and how the incessant 'pinging' of bullets ricocheting off the vehicle was scary. He used to tease the police by joking that whenever they chased a criminal on to Jacques Road, they would stop at the entrance, terminate the pursuit and shout, "Alright, alright, next time, next time!"

It's embarrassing that for over 30 years, a main thoroughfare like Mountain View Avenue has remained extremely volatile, a notorious hot spot for ensconced gunmen with their high-powered weapons, violent, often impassable and a law unto itself.

I have patients with seriously out-of-control hypertension and/or diabetes living in volatile commu-nities. They cannot come for their routine follow-up appointments or get out to purchase medications because their communities are overrun by criminals bent on warring with each other for one reason or another with absolutely no regard for collateral damage. I constantly fret that these unfortunate patients will become part of our frightful crime statistics.

Suffering children

In those communities, it's routine for families to abandon their beds and sleep on the floor in an effort to stay as flat as possible during the nights. People are afraid to go to the shop, wash or hang their clothes outside because marauding gunmen with high-powered rifles or stray shots may kill them or their children. Scores of poor children, already handicapped by poverty and negative social pressures, are sentenced to ignorance and acculturated into a violent existence by brutal men and a government obviously impotent when it comes to efficiently fighting crime.

Make-belief movie violence pales when compared to the murder, mayhem and horror meted out to adults and children in some depressed communities. The streets in gun-controlled communities remain eerily empty day and night. Some bravely scurry to work as quickly as possible. Gunmen have no regard for privacy or endangering the lives of citizens as they move from yard to yard in order to maintain 'cover'. Fears of indiscriminate reprisal killings abound and word circulates almost daily that such and such a street is going to attack this or that street tonight and that "man, woman an' pickney fi dead." People complain that the police are only on the streets temporarily and that heavily-armed youths walk freely as soon as the security forces leave.

Our people suffering under the oppressive and nightmarish yoke of tyrannical drug-dealers, warlords and gunmen have (for the most part) resigned themselves to a miserable, anxious, helpless and very fragile existence. I certainly don't have all the answers but something definitive has to be done very soon.

The Government appears resigned to limited and temporary control over some sections of society. However, the longer that anarchy exists within those areas, the stronger it becomes. This seriously erodes the sovereignty of our government and opens the door for the spread of alternative governances across the entire country.