These are days that would have gladdened the heart of “Bad News Brown”, a character mentioned in a previous column who only calls when the news is bad.
The sudden spike in criminal activity gathered momentum last Tuesday night with the cold-blooded murder of Wilfred Chaderton and his son-in-law visiting from Austria, Gerhart Stock, at Salters, St George. I extend condolences to the families and trust the police will apprehend the perpetrators expeditiously.
The murder of a holidaying European will attract negative media publicity in Austria, doing nothing to enhance our incipient tourism efforts either there or in other continental markets. Personal safety is a key consideration when planning a holiday and cancelled holidays often follow wanton murders.
These murders again highlight the growing use
of firearms in Barbadian criminal activity and the urgent need to enact drastic punitive measures
to deal with those convicted of illegal firearm possession and use.
The Salters murders came within days of an armed robbery at a nearby restaurant and the walk-in robbery of a Cane Garden, St Thomas family. Today, guns are the criminal’s weapons of choice. There are too many in this country and those not held legally must be confiscated and the owners punished.
I have been reliably informed that illegal guns proliferate across the island, and I believe an amnesty should be called for those holding unlicensed weapons to turn them in, following which anyone found with one should feel the full weight of the law.
Just two weeks ago, the world was shocked when in Norway, stable and prosperous on oil and gas, a 31-year-old far-right fanatic callously murdered 78 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were in their late teens and early 20s.
Ironically, Oslo, the Norwegian capital, is where every year the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. It was a tragic demonstration of fanatical xenophobia gone mad. Jo Nesbo, the leading Nordic crime writer, said Norway lost its innocence.
One report suggested the mass murderer had facelift plastic surgery in the United States to make him look like an Aryan Nazi. Adolph Hitler would have been proud of him and his actions to keep Norway “pure”.
His demented, demonic, anti-Muslim, anti-multiculturalism, fascist views are contained in a lengthy, rambling personal manifesto in which he claims that Islam has overtaken Christianity and western civilization.
Committed to turning around this trend, he lambasted Norway’s ruling left-of-centre Labour Party’s liberalism and multi-culturalism, positioning himself as first of a new generation of Knights Templar stemming the tide, and meticulously planned the massacre of some of the party elite’s children at an offshore camp.
In recent years, strong anti-immigrant sentiments have echoed across Barbados directed in particular against Guyanese who settled among us. To their eternal credit, many who were not here legitimately, voluntarily returned home to contribute to the fastest growing Caricom economy.
Fanatic behaviour is always to be feared and discouraged. Some of the things said about our Guyanese brothers and sisters were xenophobic and inflammatory. Drugs and gun crimes are most feared
in Barbados today and the departure of these Caricom nationals has done nothing to ameliorate their flow and use.
I tip my hat to Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs Adriel Brathwaite, for getting on prime time radio and TV within 24 hours of the Salters incident and making a commendable statement promising legislative intervention to address certain issues while calling on the public, parents and peers to pull their weight.
Barbadian politicians taking the public into their confidence in situations of grave concern and uncertainty is not only reassuring, but also clearly signals that those entrusted with the responsibilities of maintaining law and order are treating their jobs with the seriousness an anxious public expects.
So far this year, across the region from Guyana to Belize, there has been an increase in serious crime and murder. What happened Tuesday night was another demonstration that Barbados has not escaped the serious crime bandwagon and our entire population has a national duty to step up to the plate.
While hard economic times are imposing their own demands on a struggling population, there is a suggestion that some of the recent perpetrators are deportees from metropolitan countries, particularly the United States, where their criminal skills were honed before repatriation on completion of jail terms.
It is acknowledged that the economic depression devastating Barbados is also devastating Europe and America where the call is unrelenting that criminal non-nationals should be returned to their countries of birth.
But violent criminals are in a different class from the undocumented. The Norway massacre highlighted the ever present dangers of xenophobia and I trust the message is not lost on those who agitated aggressively to repatriate undocumented West Indians making a valuable contribution to our national development.
Peter Simmons, a social scientist, is a former diplomat. Email [email protected]
