Army called in to quell Jamaican riots
Jamaica’s leader ordered the entire army to be deployed across the island last night, trying to restore calm after three days of politically charged violence left at least 20 people dead.
Helicopters roared overhead and armoured personnel carriers rumbled over Kingston’s streets yesterday.
In spots throughout the Caribbean country, opposition supporters erected roadblocks, accusing the Government of unevenly enforcing the law by sending police and soldiers into their strongholds.
Shops and other businesses fearing looting shut down early throughout Kingston.
Gunmen have engaged police and soldiers in street shootouts since Saturday in the notoriously dangerous Tivoli Gardens neighbourhood, a stronghold of poor supporters of the opposition Jamaica Labour Party.
‘‘The Government cannot stand idly by and allow criminal elements to hold this country to ransom,’’ Prime Minister P.J. Patterson told reporters. ‘‘There must be full deployment ... to prevent anticipated problems and to ensure the restoration of law and order.’’
Soldiers began deploying en masse immediately, though it was not clear how many were involved.
Patterson said the military has been given police powers and ‘‘will concentrate mainly in the maintenance of cordons and the enforcement of curfews,’’ freeing up more police to go after criminals.
The police issued a statement yesterday, saying at least 20 people had been killed. In their last report, on Sunday, six people were dead including a police officer and soldier. Opposition supporters also threw home-made firebombs at the weekend, setting some vehicles aflame.
On Monday, a second police officer was killed. Police said gunmen shot him in his car at a roadblock in Kingston. Demonstrators in Spanish Town, near Kingston, also looted three stores, police said.
Labour Party leader Edward Seaga, a legislator from Kingston, said at least 25 people were killed and 50 injured, including children and elderly victims.
The disturbances could put a dent in Jamaica’s £1bn tourism industry, which is the island’s largest earner of foreign exchange, although most violence has been concentrated in Kingston, in the southeast of the Caribbean island, and most visitors go to tourist resorts in the north and west.
Jamaica’s opposition accused the Government of unevenly enforcing the law by sending police and soldiers into its strongholds.
The violence erupted on Saturday when police and soldiers moved into Tivoli Gardens, just west of the downtown commercial area, to search for guns following a spate of gang fighting. Police said they were fired on.
In the last few months, gangs from opposition and governing party strongholds have been fighting each other, leaving dozens dead.
What sparked the latest violence wasn’t clear, although politicians on both sides have accused each other of inciting violence ahead of general elections due by next year.
Demonstrators who erected roadblocks said they were protesting a police crackdown on a neighbourhood that supports the Labour Party.
‘‘The police are downtown killing people, but only Labourites,’’ said 48-year-old Beverly Brown, among 30 protesters at a makeshift roadblock in the Grant’s Pen neighbourhood.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Kingston’s many gangs were used to rustle up votes for Jamaica’s two main political parties. Although the gangs now focus on drugs, most have political loyalties and often clash over party affiliations.
