Lead UN charge against US on gun policy, judge urges Ja
Published:Friday | November 1, 2019 | 12:24 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Jamaica should lead a regional challenge against the United States Government over its lax gun laws and porous ports that allow illegal arms to be trafficked throughout the Caribbean, the chief justice of The Cayman Islands has said.
Anthony Smellie, who was born in Jamaica, said that the tabling of a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly, under the signatures of the majority of political leaders in the Western Hemisphere, would carry a weight that the US could not ignore.
“While we are all aware of its sense of American exceptionalism, even the United States needs allies, and there are tremendous strengths in numbers,” said Smellie, while speaking at a distinguished lecture during the Cornwall College Old Boys’ Association’s Homecoming Week recently.
“Our countries should bring international pressure to bear, starting in the United Nations. ... Why shouldn’t Jamaica take a lead role on this subject in the Caribbean and in the wider hemisphere? They are members of CARICOM and the Organisation of American States (OAS),” he added.
Last month, the United States withdrew its signature from the crucial United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed by 97 states, including five of the world’s top 10 arms producers – the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain – and Smellie is not convinced that this will change any time soon. Jamaica is also a signatory to the treaty.
“There is no reason to think that any action will be taken by the United States government in the foreseeable future to recognise, let alone respect and honour, its obligation to relieve its neighbouring states of the devastation caused by the American gun,” he argued
“This state of indifference, foisted upon our neighbours by the USA, even while she and her fellow members of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), G7, actually demand that everything imaginary be done to curb the drug trafficking and money laundering, and these demands are made even while ignoring the obvious connection between those kinds of criminal activities and their enabling and facilitation by the American gun,” Smellie said.
Smellie further characterised the relationship between the United States and her neighbours as victimiser and victim - in which the only human right respected is the Second Amendment proviso often asserted by the members of powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, for the sake of their “vaunted right to bear arms while the lives and safety of tens of millions are subjected to an Orwellian distortion of reality in which all people are said to be equal, but one group is perversely more equal than the other”.