The dismissal and transfers of senior public servants, allegedly as a response to the Armadale Report produced by Mr. Justice Patrick Harrison, if that were all that were done would simply be to add one form of cruelty to another.  The suggestion that the transfer and demotion of Major Richard Reece from his post as permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security to the post of director general of the Ministry of Local Government in the Office of the Prime Minister has followed the resignation of Mrs. Allison Anderson McLean as executive director of the Child Development Agency (CDA).

There is no clear acknowledgement that the resignation and transfer are the Government’s response to the Report.  However, there is a reasonable inference that connects them.  The four police personnel interdicted were present on the fateful evening of May 22, 2009 in which five girls who were wards of Armadale perished when a tear gas canister, hurled in the dorm 20 feet by 12 feet in which 20 girls had been under locked down for more than two weeks, ignited and set the dorm ablaze, according to the report.  Five wards of the state perished in that fire.

The Child Care and Protection Act, which is the law under which the girls were detained as wards of the state, does not contemplate that any of them should be isolated for the maximum 72 hours that Correctional Service regulations currently allow.  These young girls were detained for more than two weeks at the time of the fire.  This must have been a form of torture.  The Armadale report found that the breaches were systemic and the breaches were the result of the cruelty and insensitivity and inhumanity of particular persons.

Inter alia it says: ‘My findings based on the evidence reveal a wide range of shortcomings.  There were breaches of duty and administrative errors by the Correctional Services Department, indifferent and insensitive actions by public officials, troubled and unruly girls further traumatized by some uncaring adults, unjust treatment of girls, unlawful and impulsive action by police officers and the absence of any structured safety system in an emergency at Armadale.  Those among others, combined with the negligent action of public officials made inevitable the tragedy of Armadale on the night of May 22 2009.’

Horrendous tragedy

Even the careful choice of words and the candid assessment by Mr. Justice Harrison do not adequately convey the scar on the skin of our humanity, as Jamaicans that was Armadale May 22, 2009.  It is truly a horrendous tragedy.  More persons have died in a single event and more even at the hand of the state.  None however combined the Jamaican cruelty with the inept neglect and inhumanity of many para-statal actors on the Jamaican landscape the way Armadale has.

How does one explain how firefighters come on the scene of the fire and there are 20 young girls trapped in the blaze, but they do not make as their first action to axe down the door.  It took the fire brigade from 8:53 when they were first called to 9:15 — all of 22 minutes to get there and then they found other priorities, which trumped saving the lives of the 20 young girls.  How does one explain that though there had been previous fires at the institution the state did not find it necessary to replenish the exhausted fire extinguishers?

Regulations allow for a maximum isolation (lock down) period of 72 hours (three days), these girls were locked down for more than two weeks at the time of the fire.  They were confined in a room measuring 240 sq ft. for 23 hours per day, with inadequate furniture and no activity.  They were restricted to using the bathroom for one hour per day.  The water was turned off in the room and they were given individual buckets kept in this room, in which to put their human bodily waste.  At least the animals in Noah’s Ark had the flood as their excuse; what was the excuse at Armadale?     Why did neither the leadership of Correctional Services nor the Ministry of National Security including the minister find it necessary to act?

It was cruelty; we have made a national pastime of being cruel to each other.  This was our brand of the holocaust.  The numbers were not there but the intention, inhumanity and indifference were there in abundance.  German theologians who review their history of the mistreatment and incineration of Jews have wrestled with the question of silence.  Why, they asked themselves, did good people including religious people not speak up?  Why did they not protest and condemn this atrocity?  We have our answer in Jamaica; they say apathy is the world’s problem and nobody cares.  In seeking to account for the behaviour of the unruly girls, Mr. Harrison leaves this paragraph:

‘This was the injustice of collective punishment in operation.  Some of the girls were compliant and meekly resigned themselves to their fate, for a period in excess of a year.  Others were not so compliant and did not.  The latter group is deserving of some degree of understanding.  There is a level below which no human being should be persistently forced and expected to exist.  The girls in the office dormitory at Armadale on May 22, 2009 had been degraded to that level.’

Respond to issues

It is the watch of the Golding administration to respond.  This is not world financial recession, this is not IMF; this is about the Jamaican government and the Jamaican people.  This is not the problem we wish away.  These are issues in response to which public policy takes shape.  We must insist and our government leads us along that path, that such incidents, as the tragedy at Armadale are never repeated.  The dribbling out of actions and consequences without clarification and explanation has become characteristic of the political administration.

The Golding administration has shown itself to lack openness, a sense of process and thoroughness.  The habit of scapegoating individual public officials and singling them out for exemplary humiliation will not do this time around.  A far more thorough approach to protect the rights of our children and change the ethos of care and protection afforded to wards of the state is nothing less than what is required.

Blame cannot be made to lie at the feet of Government alone.  The self-righteous bleating of certain sections of the rights community is far from what is appropriate.  There are those that have formed the opinion that there is an element of obsequiousness in their protestations.  It is clear that internationally, there is a lot of project funding available for matters relating to the rights and welfare of children.  It would not be difficult to take copies of the banner headlines of newspapers that chronicle the mistreatment of our children and take these stories to agencies in Europe and get them to fund our efforts in responding ostensible to the needs of children, like the girls of Armadale.

Often, when such funds are raised they go to prop up lifestyles of consultants and attorneys and advocates, but very little filters down to the children.  It is a cruel to seek to profit from the misery of our children and wards of the state, as it is to lock them down into a 20 x 12 room for 23 hours per day and hurl tear gas canisters into a room with 20 children with no exit.

The most profound challenge of all is to reverse the ethos of cruelty.  Bob Marley says, “Man to man is so unjust, you don’t know who to trust.”  It seems to me there is first and foremost an issue of training.  There is no doubt that those who are called upon to care for our children, many of whom are troubled in the public service are in need of specialized training.  It is one of the areas to which the institution of which I am a part, has directed its intellectual and professional resources.  It seems to me that at a minimum, we need to include training in child rights and in compassion.  More need to be said about this and more space should be devoted to it.

The other is supervision and auditing of timely reports.  Thirdly, there is a need for a more organized role of churches and NGOs properly supervised, regulated and audited in agency care.  This is part of the reason I regret to see Allison Anderson McLean leave the CDA, because she had brought a discipline of mind and an intellectual rigor to the leadership, and I would have expected it to have been her next step.  Armadale is a plague on all our houses.  We must do something about it.