Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
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Or just this c00nette?Damn negritude didn't do anything for y'all
Police Violence in Brazil Was Just Called a Human Rights Crisis
It's especially rampant in Rio de Janeiro.
Nicole Froio | MAY 11, 2017 11:50AM EDT
In Brazil, a human rights crisis is underway at the hands of police and the main victims of this fatal violence are black men and boys. Last week, Amnesty International warned that Brazilian authorities are ignoring the killings, which have risen sharply since 2012. The organization also emphasized that the crisis is especially brutal in Rio de Janeiro, where there have been 182 killings by police during January and February of 2017, more than double than over the same period in 2012.
This fatal police violence is especially rampant in favelas — unregulated settlements born out of a lack of housing across the city, which are home to more than 1 million people in Rio. Usually built up and down hills that were ignored by real estate developers, favelas are welcoming, vibrant, and unique communities that are historically places of Afro-Brazilian resistance. However, their historical origins mean they are often neglected by the government. The state's negligence of favelas goes from basic sanitation issues to healthcare and education — but the most urgent oversight is the unaccountable and virulent military police.
In March, 13-year-old Maria Eduarda Alves da Conceição was shot dead by the military police in her school in Pavuna. In the beginning of April 2015, a 10-year-old boy named Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira was killed by the police in his community of Complexo do Alemão, a large group of favelas in Rio. Jonathan de Oliveira Lima was 19 when he was fatally shot in the back by police as he was walking home in Manguinhos, another marginalized community in the North Zone of Rio. In a 2016 Human Rights Watch report, it was estimated that Rio police have killed 8,000 people in the last decade. Less than 1 percent of police killings received charges, according to Human Rights Watch.
With constant shootouts between the police and the drug gangs, young people are not free to roam in their own communities and are risking their lives by doing something as banal as going to school. Their parents' jobs are at risk, too, when they are forced to stay home during a shootout, which can last minutes or hours, and happen daily in some communities. The conflicts also stigmatize favelas and their residents, which could impact the employability of young people and local businesses, especially when tourism declines because of the favelas' dangerous reputation.
Mariluce Mariá, an artist who teaches children in the Complexo do Alemão favela how to paint, explains how young people have been affected: “The violence is also threatening young people’s access to education and other rights.... Schools close for the day and students suffer for it. The services in the area come to a halt, especially healthcare services, and social programs are shutting down,” she told Teen Vogue.
The Brazilian military police has racist roots: The force was created in 1808 to prevent slave uprisings when the Portuguese royal family fled Europe to escape Napoleon Bonaparte. The history of the military police is further complicated by Brazil’s period of military dictatorship. From 1964 to 1985, the police force was categorically used to suppress riots and catch left-wing rebels under the guise of national security, while torture and murder of rebels was widespread. When the dictatorship came to an end, police violence did not subside as expected; between 1991 and 2007, Rio homicide rates were at an average of 6,826 per year, according to RioOnWatch.
Many argue that this is because of Governor Leonel Brizola’s policies from 1983 to 1994, which forbid military police intervention in favelas. Brizola’s campaign centered on human rights and a recognition of the brutality of the military police — but on the other hand, his policies left favela residents to fend for themselves against drug gang violence while the drug trafficking business grew. The reversal of his non-interventionist policies by his successors has largely focused on protecting the upper classes from favela violence spillage, rather than ensuring the safety for all.
In 2008, an attempt to “pacify” the favelas in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics involved bloody police operations to push out drug lords and install the police in the communities. While this pacification program has worked in some smaller favelas, in others the police answer to no one. This has allowed the police to conduct violent operations in favelas with no oversight from authorities like the state's security secretary Roberto Sá or Rio’s recently elected mayor, Marcelo Crivella.
While Amnesty International is warning against the high rate of murders in this recent report, this situation has been affecting residents of favelas on a daily basis for years. It has gotten so bad that some activists have called the situation an instance of “black genocide.” Countless protests have been organized by favela residents, numerous public forums have been held to discuss solutions, but current mayor Crivella and the previous mayor Eduardo Paes alike have neglected to change policy, consider police reform, or listen to favela activists.
Young people from favelas are protesting and resisting these human rights violations in myriad ways. In Complexo do Alemão, a group of young people formed a media collective to report on their local community and publish the opinions of the residents. Young activists are always present in public forums to make their grievances heard, and have even created an app, Nós por Nós (translated to Us for Us), that makes reporting police violence — including the submission of video and photo evidence — easy and anonymous. Young people in favelas have to abdicate their youth in order to resist and fight a historic force of racist repression that Brazilian authorities have refused to deal with for decades.
“With this logic of war, in the way the state comes into the favela, children and young people have to grow up urgently, learn how to behave if they are approached by the police, or what to do in a situation of war,” activist member Raull Santiago told Teen Vogue. “We grow up quicker, with larger responsibilities early on. It’s necessary to guarantee other policies for the favela, not just for the police. We need to have our rights guaranteed, especially our right to come and go.”
Police Violence in Brazil Is SO Bad It's Being Called a Human Rights Crisis
It's especially rampant in Rio de Janeiro.
Nicole Froio | MAY 11, 2017 11:50AM EDT
In Brazil, a human rights crisis is underway at the hands of police and the main victims of this fatal violence are black men and boys. Last week, Amnesty International warned that Brazilian authorities are ignoring the killings, which have risen sharply since 2012. The organization also emphasized that the crisis is especially brutal in Rio de Janeiro, where there have been 182 killings by police during January and February of 2017, more than double than over the same period in 2012.
This fatal police violence is especially rampant in favelas — unregulated settlements born out of a lack of housing across the city, which are home to more than 1 million people in Rio. Usually built up and down hills that were ignored by real estate developers, favelas are welcoming, vibrant, and unique communities that are historically places of Afro-Brazilian resistance. However, their historical origins mean they are often neglected by the government. The state's negligence of favelas goes from basic sanitation issues to healthcare and education — but the most urgent oversight is the unaccountable and virulent military police.
In March, 13-year-old Maria Eduarda Alves da Conceição was shot dead by the military police in her school in Pavuna. In the beginning of April 2015, a 10-year-old boy named Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira was killed by the police in his community of Complexo do Alemão, a large group of favelas in Rio. Jonathan de Oliveira Lima was 19 when he was fatally shot in the back by police as he was walking home in Manguinhos, another marginalized community in the North Zone of Rio. In a 2016 Human Rights Watch report, it was estimated that Rio police have killed 8,000 people in the last decade. Less than 1 percent of police killings received charges, according to Human Rights Watch.
With constant shootouts between the police and the drug gangs, young people are not free to roam in their own communities and are risking their lives by doing something as banal as going to school. Their parents' jobs are at risk, too, when they are forced to stay home during a shootout, which can last minutes or hours, and happen daily in some communities. The conflicts also stigmatize favelas and their residents, which could impact the employability of young people and local businesses, especially when tourism declines because of the favelas' dangerous reputation.
Mariluce Mariá, an artist who teaches children in the Complexo do Alemão favela how to paint, explains how young people have been affected: “The violence is also threatening young people’s access to education and other rights.... Schools close for the day and students suffer for it. The services in the area come to a halt, especially healthcare services, and social programs are shutting down,” she told Teen Vogue.
The Brazilian military police has racist roots: The force was created in 1808 to prevent slave uprisings when the Portuguese royal family fled Europe to escape Napoleon Bonaparte. The history of the military police is further complicated by Brazil’s period of military dictatorship. From 1964 to 1985, the police force was categorically used to suppress riots and catch left-wing rebels under the guise of national security, while torture and murder of rebels was widespread. When the dictatorship came to an end, police violence did not subside as expected; between 1991 and 2007, Rio homicide rates were at an average of 6,826 per year, according to RioOnWatch.
Many argue that this is because of Governor Leonel Brizola’s policies from 1983 to 1994, which forbid military police intervention in favelas. Brizola’s campaign centered on human rights and a recognition of the brutality of the military police — but on the other hand, his policies left favela residents to fend for themselves against drug gang violence while the drug trafficking business grew. The reversal of his non-interventionist policies by his successors has largely focused on protecting the upper classes from favela violence spillage, rather than ensuring the safety for all.
In 2008, an attempt to “pacify” the favelas in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics involved bloody police operations to push out drug lords and install the police in the communities. While this pacification program has worked in some smaller favelas, in others the police answer to no one. This has allowed the police to conduct violent operations in favelas with no oversight from authorities like the state's security secretary Roberto Sá or Rio’s recently elected mayor, Marcelo Crivella.
While Amnesty International is warning against the high rate of murders in this recent report, this situation has been affecting residents of favelas on a daily basis for years. It has gotten so bad that some activists have called the situation an instance of “black genocide.” Countless protests have been organized by favela residents, numerous public forums have been held to discuss solutions, but current mayor Crivella and the previous mayor Eduardo Paes alike have neglected to change policy, consider police reform, or listen to favela activists.
Young people from favelas are protesting and resisting these human rights violations in myriad ways. In Complexo do Alemão, a group of young people formed a media collective to report on their local community and publish the opinions of the residents. Young activists are always present in public forums to make their grievances heard, and have even created an app, Nós por Nós (translated to Us for Us), that makes reporting police violence — including the submission of video and photo evidence — easy and anonymous. Young people in favelas have to abdicate their youth in order to resist and fight a historic force of racist repression that Brazilian authorities have refused to deal with for decades.
“With this logic of war, in the way the state comes into the favela, children and young people have to grow up urgently, learn how to behave if they are approached by the police, or what to do in a situation of war,” activist member Raull Santiago told Teen Vogue. “We grow up quicker, with larger responsibilities early on. It’s necessary to guarantee other policies for the favela, not just for the police. We need to have our rights guaranteed, especially our right to come and go.”
Police Violence in Brazil Is SO Bad It's Being Called a Human Rights Crisis
Colombian River Gains Legal Rights
Thu, 05/11/2017 - 11:48am
Colombia's Atrato River
Another river has won legal rights.
In a landmark verdict, Colombia’s Constitutional Court has recognized the Atrato River basin as having rights to “protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration.”
The verdict was reached in November 2016, but only publicized this month. The move marks at least the fourth river this year to receive legal rights. The others include the Whanangui River in New Zealand, and India’s Ganga and Jamuna rivers.
In early 2015, the Colombian group Tierra Digna began a litigation process to defend the Atrato River and the rights of the communities inhabiting its basin. For years, the region has suffered from the ravages of illegal gold mining, which has led to both humanitarian and environmental crises.
The lawsuit was brought in collaboration with the Foro Interétnico Solidaridad Chocó and different Afro-Colombian Community Councils located in the river basin.
This decision aims to offer protection to the Atrato River while simultaneously guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the communities that inhabit its banks. Under this new paradigm, known as “biocultural rights,” the Court has asserted that the most effective way to protect ethnic communities’ rights is through biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration.
#AtratoVivo: A Map of Human, Environmental and Territorial Rights on the Atrato River
Courtesy of Tierra Digna
Colombian River Gains Legal Rights
Thu, 05/11/2017 - 11:48am
Colombia's Atrato River
Another river has won legal rights.
In a landmark verdict, Colombia’s Constitutional Court has recognized the Atrato River basin as having rights to “protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration.”
The verdict was reached in November 2016, but only publicized this month. The move marks at least the fourth river this year to receive legal rights. The others include the Whanangui River in New Zealand, and India’s Ganga and Jamuna rivers.
In early 2015, the Colombian group Tierra Digna began a litigation process to defend the Atrato River and the rights of the communities inhabiting its basin. For years, the region has suffered from the ravages of illegal gold mining, which has led to both humanitarian and environmental crises.
The lawsuit was brought in collaboration with the Foro Interétnico Solidaridad Chocó and different Afro-Colombian Community Councils located in the river basin.
This decision aims to offer protection to the Atrato River while simultaneously guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the communities that inhabit its banks. Under this new paradigm, known as “biocultural rights,” the Court has asserted that the most effective way to protect ethnic communities’ rights is through biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration.
#AtratoVivo: A Map of Human, Environmental and Territorial Rights on the Atrato River
Courtesy of Tierra Digna
Colombian River Gains Legal Rights
Afro-Colombian Strike in Choco: A Historical Reckoning
For eight long days this August, the majority-Afro-Colombian department of Choco was on indefinite strike.
Shops in this northwestern Pacific coast department of Colombia were closed, classes cancelled, and businesses shut down as thousands of the region’s residents filled the local capital of Quibdo to protest the Colombian state’s persistent “abandonment” of its citizens in this corner of the country.
What Chocoanos were demanding from the Colombian government was nothing more than a dignified life: improvements to roads, health care, education, basic infrastructure, unemployment, public services, and electricity, among other demands. Indeed, when you compare quality of life statistics between Choco and other regions of Colombia, the differences are staggering. While 65.9 percent of Choco’s population lives below poverty (and 37.1 percent in extreme poverty) — the highest rate in the country — the below-poverty level is only about 10 percent in the nation’s capital of Bogotá.
The astounding poverty rate puts a number on the region’s crumbling-to-nonexistent infrastructure. In Choco, any resident requiring serious medical attention must travel outside the department, since the region’s only hospital (infamous for its poor facilities) is going bankrupt. About 11 municipalities do not have access to any electricity, making it the region with the least electrical connections in the country. Roads — the basic foundation of any country’s infrastructure — do not exist between the capital of Quibdó and neighboring cities of Medellín and Pereira, or even within many parts of Choco itself, leaving villages and towns largely secluded from each other.
And everyday Chocoanos are paying the price for it. As of 2014, about 81 percent of Chocoanos have basic needs like potable water unmet, compared to the national average of 37 percent. Quibdó has become a city of internal refugees, as more than half (52 percent) of the city’s residents in 2012 were Afro-Colombians who were forcibly displaced from their land in the last 20 years, the victims of the armed conflict between right-wing paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, and state forces.
The children of Choco, the future of the region, are suffering especially. An astounding 42 percent of babies born in Choco die before their first birthday, double the average infant mortality rate in Colombia. As of July 2016, 51 indigenous children and 11 adults have died in Choco from preventable diseases such as malaria and diarrhea as a result of grave malnutrition. A 2014 report found that 36 percent of children in the region did not have a healthy size for their age and weight. And this is merely touching the surface of the devastation faced by poor and struggling Chocoanos, young and old.
But the origins of the strike in Choco run deeper, for Choco’s crushing poverty is a historical product of what Saidiya Hartman calls “the afterlife of slavery.” Dating back centuries, Choco was one of the centers of slavery in the Kingdom of New Granada (what later became Colombia), created on the backs of African slaves and their descendants who were forced to work the region’s famous gold mines for their Spanish and then Colombian overlords. “If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America,” writes Hartman in Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), “it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment.”
The first African cuadrilla (enslaved work gang) arrived to Choco in 1690 to mine for gold at the orders of Francisco de Arboleda Salazar, a slaveholder from Popayán. By 1724, at least 2,000 African captives were working the province’s gold mines. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the once sparsely inhabited province of Choco was transformed into a slavery frontier ruled over by a small class of wealthy, white slaveholders. In 1778, of the nearly 15,000 inhabitants, only 2 percent were whites, 22 percent free Blacks, 37 percent Indigenous, and 39 percent slaves, definitively making Choco a majority-black region.
Gold mining was notoriously harsh work. Throughout the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, many slaves worked long days in large cuadrillas overseen by captains who monitored their work and violently disciplined any alleged infractions, while others, especially enslaved women and children, spent endless hours panning for gold in cold, piranha-infested rivers. Disease, malnutrition, and death were rampant in the gold mining camps of Choco. In the early eighteenth century, several slaveholders estimated that more than 300 slaves had died from hunger in the region. In other parts of Colombia, slaveholders often threatened to send any “unruly” slaves to the gold mines of Choco, the harshest punishment. After slavery was finally abolished in 1852, the black population of Choco was continually blamed for the region’s poverty, while many of Choco’s white inhabitants fled the province.
The struggle for recognition from the Colombian government continued well into the 20th Century, with protests against the Colombian state’s “abandonment” of Choco dating back to the 1910s and 1920s. Echoing the organizers of today’s strike, one writer from the Quibdeño newspaper A.B.C. in 1926 spoke of the “poor abandonment, poor isolation, poor indifference, in an almost chronic form, that is suffered by this beautiful region of the country called Choco.”
This is certainly not the first strike in Choco. Since 1954, Chocoanos have been on strike six times, again in 1967, 1987, 2000, 2009, and most recently this August 2016. As of Aug. 24, the strike is officially over after the Civic Committee for Salvation and Dignity came to a final agreement with the Colombian government. Among several demands, the government agreed to invest 720 billion pesos for the building of two major roads connecting the capital to Medellín and Pereira, the construction of a new, well-resourced hospital, and electricity in those municipalities lacking them.
Direct action gets the goods.
But in the wake of the strike’s end, it is fundamental to remember that this strike, like others before it, was more than just a protest against the recent state of affairs — it was a deep, historical reckoning with Colombia’s ghost of slavery, which gave birth to a unequal legacy of crushing poverty and persistent death that remains with us today in Choco.
Afro-Colombian Strike in Choco: A Historical Reckoning
For eight long days this August, the majority-Afro-Colombian department of Choco was on indefinite strike.
Shops in this northwestern Pacific coast department of Colombia were closed, classes cancelled, and businesses shut down as thousands of the region’s residents filled the local capital of Quibdo to protest the Colombian state’s persistent “abandonment” of its citizens in this corner of the country.
What Chocoanos were demanding from the Colombian government was nothing more than a dignified life: improvements to roads, health care, education, basic infrastructure, unemployment, public services, and electricity, among other demands. Indeed, when you compare quality of life statistics between Choco and other regions of Colombia, the differences are staggering. While 65.9 percent of Choco’s population lives below poverty (and 37.1 percent in extreme poverty) — the highest rate in the country — the below-poverty level is only about 10 percent in the nation’s capital of Bogotá.
The astounding poverty rate puts a number on the region’s crumbling-to-nonexistent infrastructure. In Choco, any resident requiring serious medical attention must travel outside the department, since the region’s only hospital (infamous for its poor facilities) is going bankrupt. About 11 municipalities do not have access to any electricity, making it the region with the least electrical connections in the country. Roads — the basic foundation of any country’s infrastructure — do not exist between the capital of Quibdó and neighboring cities of Medellín and Pereira, or even within many parts of Choco itself, leaving villages and towns largely secluded from each other.
And everyday Chocoanos are paying the price for it. As of 2014, about 81 percent of Chocoanos have basic needs like potable water unmet, compared to the national average of 37 percent. Quibdó has become a city of internal refugees, as more than half (52 percent) of the city’s residents in 2012 were Afro-Colombians who were forcibly displaced from their land in the last 20 years, the victims of the armed conflict between right-wing paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, and state forces.
The children of Choco, the future of the region, are suffering especially. An astounding 42 percent of babies born in Choco die before their first birthday, double the average infant mortality rate in Colombia. As of July 2016, 51 indigenous children and 11 adults have died in Choco from preventable diseases such as malaria and diarrhea as a result of grave malnutrition. A 2014 report found that 36 percent of children in the region did not have a healthy size for their age and weight. And this is merely touching the surface of the devastation faced by poor and struggling Chocoanos, young and old.
But the origins of the strike in Choco run deeper, for Choco’s crushing poverty is a historical product of what Saidiya Hartman calls “the afterlife of slavery.” Dating back centuries, Choco was one of the centers of slavery in the Kingdom of New Granada (what later became Colombia), created on the backs of African slaves and their descendants who were forced to work the region’s famous gold mines for their Spanish and then Colombian overlords. “If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America,” writes Hartman in Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), “it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment.”
The first African cuadrilla (enslaved work gang) arrived to Choco in 1690 to mine for gold at the orders of Francisco de Arboleda Salazar, a slaveholder from Popayán. By 1724, at least 2,000 African captives were working the province’s gold mines. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the once sparsely inhabited province of Choco was transformed into a slavery frontier ruled over by a small class of wealthy, white slaveholders. In 1778, of the nearly 15,000 inhabitants, only 2 percent were whites, 22 percent free Blacks, 37 percent Indigenous, and 39 percent slaves, definitively making Choco a majority-black region.
Gold mining was notoriously harsh work. Throughout the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, many slaves worked long days in large cuadrillas overseen by captains who monitored their work and violently disciplined any alleged infractions, while others, especially enslaved women and children, spent endless hours panning for gold in cold, piranha-infested rivers. Disease, malnutrition, and death were rampant in the gold mining camps of Choco. In the early eighteenth century, several slaveholders estimated that more than 300 slaves had died from hunger in the region. In other parts of Colombia, slaveholders often threatened to send any “unruly” slaves to the gold mines of Choco, the harshest punishment. After slavery was finally abolished in 1852, the black population of Choco was continually blamed for the region’s poverty, while many of Choco’s white inhabitants fled the province.
The struggle for recognition from the Colombian government continued well into the 20th Century, with protests against the Colombian state’s “abandonment” of Choco dating back to the 1910s and 1920s. Echoing the organizers of today’s strike, one writer from the Quibdeño newspaper A.B.C. in 1926 spoke of the “poor abandonment, poor isolation, poor indifference, in an almost chronic form, that is suffered by this beautiful region of the country called Choco.”
This is certainly not the first strike in Choco. Since 1954, Chocoanos have been on strike six times, again in 1967, 1987, 2000, 2009, and most recently this August 2016. As of Aug. 24, the strike is officially over after the Civic Committee for Salvation and Dignity came to a final agreement with the Colombian government. Among several demands, the government agreed to invest 720 billion pesos for the building of two major roads connecting the capital to Medellín and Pereira, the construction of a new, well-resourced hospital, and electricity in those municipalities lacking them.
Direct action gets the goods.
But in the wake of the strike’s end, it is fundamental to remember that this strike, like others before it, was more than just a protest against the recent state of affairs — it was a deep, historical reckoning with Colombia’s ghost of slavery, which gave birth to a unequal legacy of crushing poverty and persistent death that remains with us today in Choco.
Afro-Colombian Strike in Choco: A Historical Reckoning
Barbados’ rate of violent crime ‘the exception’ in Caribbean
GERALYN EDWARD, geralynedward@nationnews.com
Added 16 May 2017
AN INTER-AMERICAN Development Bank (IDB) study on crime says Barbados was an exception when it came to rising violent crime in the Caribbean.
In a report issued today the IDB said "Barbados seems to be the exception to the high rates of violent crime in the Caribbean region. It has one of the lowest homicide rates in Latin American and Caribbean region (11 per 100 000 in 2015), although that rate has increased in recent years."
It added: "Victimisation rates for the five crimes measured in the survey were among the lowest in the region. However, there are two important factors to highlight: violent crime – specifically assault and threat – while low for the region have increased in the last decade and are still high compared to the international average."
According to the IDB despite lower levels of homicide, the percentage of the population indirectly effected by violence is high.
"Barbados is at a point where anti-crime efforts (both crime prevention and control), that are evidence-based and targeted at high-risk individuals and geographic areas, could prevent higher crime rates in the future.
"A comparison of the national victimisation rates reported in 2015 with those of 2002 in Barbados shows that the percentage of the population victimised by burglary has gone down (3.2 per cent to 1.7 per cent), while rates of assaults and threats have gone up significantly (3.2 per cent to 5.1 per cent). Robbery (0.8 per cent to 1.1 per cent) and theft of personal property (2.5 per cent to 2.7 per cent) increased slightly, though not significantly.
The Greater Bridgetown Area has some of the lowest victimisation rates for common street crimes compared to five other capital cities covered in the report. Only 3.4 per cent of residents reported being a victim of theft of personal property (stealing without violence) and 1.9 per cent of robbery (stealing with violence) in a 12-month period. These victimisation rates were significantly lower than international averages. Prevalence of burglary in Bridgetown (3.2 per cent) was slightly lower than Caribbean regional and international averages (4.1 and 4.5 respectively). (GE)
Download the full analysis of Barbados' situation here.
Barbados’ rate of violent crime ‘the exception’ in Caribbean
GERALYN EDWARD, geralynedward@nationnews.com
Added 16 May 2017
AN INTER-AMERICAN Development Bank (IDB) study on crime says Barbados was an exception when it came to rising violent crime in the Caribbean.
In a report issued today the IDB said "Barbados seems to be the exception to the high rates of violent crime in the Caribbean region. It has one of the lowest homicide rates in Latin American and Caribbean region (11 per 100 000 in 2015), although that rate has increased in recent years."
It added: "Victimisation rates for the five crimes measured in the survey were among the lowest in the region. However, there are two important factors to highlight: violent crime – specifically assault and threat – while low for the region have increased in the last decade and are still high compared to the international average."
According to the IDB despite lower levels of homicide, the percentage of the population indirectly effected by violence is high.
"Barbados is at a point where anti-crime efforts (both crime prevention and control), that are evidence-based and targeted at high-risk individuals and geographic areas, could prevent higher crime rates in the future.
"A comparison of the national victimisation rates reported in 2015 with those of 2002 in Barbados shows that the percentage of the population victimised by burglary has gone down (3.2 per cent to 1.7 per cent), while rates of assaults and threats have gone up significantly (3.2 per cent to 5.1 per cent). Robbery (0.8 per cent to 1.1 per cent) and theft of personal property (2.5 per cent to 2.7 per cent) increased slightly, though not significantly.
The Greater Bridgetown Area has some of the lowest victimisation rates for common street crimes compared to five other capital cities covered in the report. Only 3.4 per cent of residents reported being a victim of theft of personal property (stealing without violence) and 1.9 per cent of robbery (stealing with violence) in a 12-month period. These victimisation rates were significantly lower than international averages. Prevalence of burglary in Bridgetown (3.2 per cent) was slightly lower than Caribbean regional and international averages (4.1 and 4.5 respectively). (GE)
Download the full analysis of Barbados' situation here.
Barbados’ rate of violent crime ‘the exception’ in Caribbean
Internal union squabble turns into racism
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 18 May 2017 00:00
Right now, there is major upheaval within the Public Service Union and the trade union movement in Belize following the recording and release of a conversation between union executives. In it, the PSU President, Eldred Neal, and trade unionists, Marvin Mora and Lorelei Westby, are heard carrying on in an embarrassing conversation in which prejudicial remarks were made against the Garifuna people, and members of the union who are of the Garifuna Culture.
It has caused 9 members of the PSU’s council of management to ask for Eldred Neal’s resignation, and not to offer himself as a candidate for president in the upcoming August elections. The letter that they’ve sent to him accuses Neal of racism against Garifuna members of the council. They also alleged that he is “in the process of conducting an exercise to purge the Council of Management of its Garifuna constituents”.
The most explosive parts of the conversation, which circulated among the members of the union, and then leak to the media, are as follows.
Neal is heard saying, “I find myself [in a] stalemate now. I have a culture war in the PSU… [A] Culture war, Garifuna f**ing versus everybody else. And these people will do anything to maintain power… Around July last year when I went to St. Vincent I spent all my night researching why the Garifuna in Belize behave how they behave. Because this is the only country they behave [like that]…I gone da south last month and the motherf**ers they [are so] fixed [on] position.”
Marvin Mora, the General Secretary of the Belize Energy Workers Union, is heard in the recording saying, “here was a law, there was a law that was enacted in Belize City that did not allow the “Garif” to be here after 6:00.”
There is a dispute as to who said, “So after 6:00 [those motherf**s had to hit the bus and haul they r** outta town!”
Mora is heard saying, “And the creole applauded that law. That’s why they have it against we because we supported that the white people instituted for segregation. But then their revenge came about because when the education system was set up, the people from the different churches set up the thing so that the people who were educated were the Garifunas and they would educate the rest of us…
Mora is heard saying, “The Garifuna are greedy for power, what the “Garif” did, was, the “Garif” decided that, you know what?”
He disputes that he said it as a declaratory statement. He said that he was asking Eldred Neal if they are greedy for power. He said that he was not making a statement of fact.
There is a dispute as to who said, “Every single F**ing head of department in the public service, we gwen after them. So (inaudible) they go into the… PSU, they make sure they go into the f**ing BDF, they make sure they go into the police, they make sure they go into everything. So now you see the culture.”
So, as readers have seen, this is strong prejudicial language, aimed at the Garifuna culture, and it has been condemned-universally condemned, especially from the Garifuna conscious organizations who have spoken out publicly.
Neal has spoken to the press saying, “Whatever you have heard, has been taken out of [context], and I humbly apologize to even have the union be in this level of discontent.”
He claims that he was the target of people who wanted to tarnish his reputation as part of an internal fight over the National Trade Union Congress of Belize. There is a dispute over whether or not Floyd Neal is the duly elected president of the NTUCB. A challenge has come forth that his election to the post cannot stand because his union, the Christian Workers Union has not paid up all financial commitments to be a recognized member of the umbrella union.
Internal union squabble turns into racism
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 18 May 2017 00:00
Right now, there is major upheaval within the Public Service Union and the trade union movement in Belize following the recording and release of a conversation between union executives. In it, the PSU President, Eldred Neal, and trade unionists, Marvin Mora and Lorelei Westby, are heard carrying on in an embarrassing conversation in which prejudicial remarks were made against the Garifuna people, and members of the union who are of the Garifuna Culture.
It has caused 9 members of the PSU’s council of management to ask for Eldred Neal’s resignation, and not to offer himself as a candidate for president in the upcoming August elections. The letter that they’ve sent to him accuses Neal of racism against Garifuna members of the council. They also alleged that he is “in the process of conducting an exercise to purge the Council of Management of its Garifuna constituents”.
The most explosive parts of the conversation, which circulated among the members of the union, and then leak to the media, are as follows.
Neal is heard saying, “I find myself [in a] stalemate now. I have a culture war in the PSU… [A] Culture war, Garifuna f**ing versus everybody else. And these people will do anything to maintain power… Around July last year when I went to St. Vincent I spent all my night researching why the Garifuna in Belize behave how they behave. Because this is the only country they behave [like that]…I gone da south last month and the motherf**ers they [are so] fixed [on] position.”
Marvin Mora, the General Secretary of the Belize Energy Workers Union, is heard in the recording saying, “here was a law, there was a law that was enacted in Belize City that did not allow the “Garif” to be here after 6:00.”
There is a dispute as to who said, “So after 6:00 [those motherf**s had to hit the bus and haul they r** outta town!”
Mora is heard saying, “And the creole applauded that law. That’s why they have it against we because we supported that the white people instituted for segregation. But then their revenge came about because when the education system was set up, the people from the different churches set up the thing so that the people who were educated were the Garifunas and they would educate the rest of us…
Mora is heard saying, “The Garifuna are greedy for power, what the “Garif” did, was, the “Garif” decided that, you know what?”
He disputes that he said it as a declaratory statement. He said that he was asking Eldred Neal if they are greedy for power. He said that he was not making a statement of fact.
There is a dispute as to who said, “Every single F**ing head of department in the public service, we gwen after them. So (inaudible) they go into the… PSU, they make sure they go into the f**ing BDF, they make sure they go into the police, they make sure they go into everything. So now you see the culture.”
So, as readers have seen, this is strong prejudicial language, aimed at the Garifuna culture, and it has been condemned-universally condemned, especially from the Garifuna conscious organizations who have spoken out publicly.
Neal has spoken to the press saying, “Whatever you have heard, has been taken out of [context], and I humbly apologize to even have the union be in this level of discontent.”
He claims that he was the target of people who wanted to tarnish his reputation as part of an internal fight over the National Trade Union Congress of Belize. There is a dispute over whether or not Floyd Neal is the duly elected president of the NTUCB. A challenge has come forth that his election to the post cannot stand because his union, the Christian Workers Union has not paid up all financial commitments to be a recognized member of the umbrella union.
Internal union squabble turns into racism
How is racism if the Creoles in Belize are black too
Creoles are the black folk that have been in Belize since colonization
But look at the unionist in question
I skimmed the article
UberEatsDriver
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Yea Haiti will never change with your mindset.
What Haiti needs for starters is a better education system so corrupted leaders arent brought in. Haiti also needs help from its diaspora. Lots of proud Haitians out there but none are actually doing anything to help start change despite all the money and success they have in the states.
UberEatsDriver
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360,000 citizens have left T&T
...that's more than one-fifth the population
- Published on Dec 21, 2016, 12:25 pm AST
- By Sandhya Santoo
Source: World Economic Forum
TRINIDAD and Tobago is on a list of nine countries identified as having lost at least one-fifth of its population through emigration, according to a study by the Pew Research Center using 2015 data from the United Nations.
According to the World Economic Forum, an international organisation for public/private cooperation, which reported on the study, 22 per cent of the local population, amounting to 360,000 people live outside of Trinidad and Tobago.
Another Caribbean island made the list. Jamaica has 28 per cent or over one million nationals living in another country.
The countries of choice for emigration are America and the United Kingdom.
The research said that the impact of this is that many who leave from Trinidad and Tobago are among the “highly educated” group.
Emigration can have significant demographic effects on nations, argues the report.
For example, many young adults have left Albania, while emigration is more common among more highly educated groups in Trinidad and Tobago. In some instances, out-migration among particular groups can exacerbate demographic imbalances, such as population ageing, and leave significant skill gaps within these source countries,” stated an article from the World Economic Forum.
The other seven countries with the highest population loss are: Bosnia-Herzegovina with 30 per cent, Albania with 28 per cent, Armenia (25 per cent), Kazakhstan (22 per cent), Syria (22 per cent), Republic of Macedonia (21 per cent) and Portugal (20 per cent).
The research named 10 countries with the most migrants: India, Mexico, Russia, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ukraine, Philippines, Syria and the United Kingdom.
360,000 citizens have left T&T
Thank you for this data
