Since the recent uproar over the allegations of “rape” levelled by a Jamaican citizen, Shanique Myrie, against border officials at the Grantley Adams International Airport, a useful debate has reopened on the free movement of CARICOM nationals within the region in general, and on the experiences of travel into Barbados in particular.
Thus far, Barbadian Government officials, Opposition politicians in Barbados, Jamaican and Caribbean government officials, and at least one regional academic, Professor Neville Duncan, have made useful inputs.
My own reflections on the issue are packaged simply in the plain brown paper of a frequent user of the airport since 1990.
On no occasion have I encountered anything on the scale as horrific as what has been alleged by Myrie and the “benching” of my labouring Guyanese brothers. Nor have I ever come close to being denied entry – as far as I am aware.
However, my observations have always led me to the conclusion that the “philosophy” of the GAIA is that it exists as a port of entry for extra-regional tourists rather than for CARICOM nationals.
It is perhaps this philosophy which spills over into the “practice” of the GAIA personnel from the immigration officers to the red caps.
Any regional traveller who has had the misfortune of arriving close to an international flight would immediately notice the philosophy of “separate” treatment for CARICOM citizens no further than the immigration queue. One of the ironies of the GAIA is that the line for “citizens, residents, and CARICOM nationals” always moves slower than that of “other” travellers.
This experience lies in stark contrast to what obtains in Europe and North America, where it is non-citizens who are meticulously checked, while citizens are allowed unimpeded entry. At GAIA, for every eight international travellers cleared by immigration, only one CARICOM or Barbadian citizen is cleared.
At the Customs desk, further ignominy awaits the regional traveller, and indeed, Barbadian citizens themselves. The green line for “nothing to declare” is almost invariably closed to regional travellers, their bags are checked more closely, the facial expression of the officers less warm, and the dialogue more curt and businesslike. From my observations, I have only met an open green line when an international flight has landed.
In the moments when there are only regional flights on the ground, only the red line is open, as if the threat of drugs and contraband is strictly a regional one. These “protocols” and their attendant inconveniences are multiplied ten-fold when one has landed on a flight from Jamaica and Guyana.
These issues exist beyond Myrie. Thus, both David Comissiong and Mia Mottley were correct in their warnings that the persistent and continual cries of maltreatment by CARICOM citizens represent a stain that must be removed.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus specialising in analysis of regional affairs.
