JAMAICA | Haiti:Jamaica's Moral Reckoning: A Caribbean Betrayal

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, June 28, 2025 - In turning away Haitian refugees, Jamaica has abandoned both its humanitarian legacy and its Caribbean family. This shameful hypocrisy demands urgent redress.

When the gentleman arrived at my home on Friday evening seeking help for his daughters, his anguish was palpable. Having lived in Haiti and fathered two children aged 11 and 15, he now finds himself trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare of Jamaica's making.

Despite obtaining legitimate Jamaican citizenship for his daughters—their birthright—the government now demands they apply for visas as CARICOM citizens to enter their own country. This Kafkaesque scenario perfectly encapsulates the Andrew Holness administration's unconscionable treatment of Haiti and its people.

The Opposition has justly accused this government of multiple failures, but none cuts deeper than Jamaica's betrayal of our closest Caribbean neighbor. While we publicly wring our hands about Haiti's suffering, our actions reveal a different truth entirely.

We have transformed into the kind of nation that would make our ancestors—from Nanny of the Maroons to Marcus Garvey—weep with shame.

A Trail of Tears Across the Caribbean Sea

Haiti faces a multidimensional crisis marked by escalating violence, with over 1.3 million people now internally displaced—representing the highest number of people displaced by violence ever recorded in the country. About 5.5 million people require humanitarian assistance, with criminal groups, many of which are attached to the infamous Oligarchs, controlling over 85 percent of the capital.

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, desperate families have risked everything, crossing shark-infested waters in makeshift boats, fleeing rape and bullets in hope of sanctuary. Many have washed up on Jamaica's shores, only to meet the iron fist of deportation.

Most recently, 42 Haitian nationals—including men, women, children, and an expectant mother—were repatriated from the Boundbrook wharf in Port Antonio just one day after arriving by boat, their vessel subsequently incinerated as if to erase any evidence of their desperation.

Foreign Affairs Minister Kamina Johnson Smith's cold legalism—insisting that Jamaica's laws must be respected and treating even Haitian minors as "illegal entrants"—stands in stark contrast to the urgent appeals from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The UNHCR has been urging states in the region to suspend forced returns of Haitians due to the dire situation in their country, yet Jamaica persists in this moral abdication.

The Hypocrisy of Leadership

The irony burns particularly fiercely given that Prime Minister Andrew Holness has officially assumed the chairmanship of CARICOM on July 1, 2025, positioning himself as the leader tasked with addressing "Haiti's seemingly intractable dilemma."

Holness has led CARICOM missions to Haiti, meeting with stakeholders and expressing solidarity with "our Haitian brothers and sisters not only in words, but in deeds."

Yet what deeds do we witness? Swift deportations without due process, the criminalization of asylum seekers, and the systematic violation of the principle of non-refoulement—the cornerstone prohibition against returning people to places where they face persecution.

As Dennis Minott powerfully observed in the Gleaner, "we have betrayed Haitians seeking refuge, dignity, and kinship among us. We have uncharacteristically turned them back into the hands of their tormentors, without hearing, without compassion, without even a pause to remember who we once were."

The Stench of Selective Compassion

This Caribbean callousness reveals its most ugly truth when examined alongside Jamaica's treatment of other nationalities. We don't round up and deport Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Colombians, or wandering Bahamian fishermen with such ruthless efficiency.

The differential treatment exposes an uncomfortable reality: our objections to Haitian refugees are fundamentally rooted in anti-Black racism and classism.

Caribbean states refused to resettle Haitian refugees even when the US sought a network of safe haven zones, a pattern that continues today. CARICOM's interest in the "Haitian problem" extends only to finding ways to prevent Haitians from seeking refuge in member states. This extends beyond Jamaica to include Barbados, The Bahamas, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago—all complicit in this regional abandonment.

From Liberation Leaders to Moral Laggards

Jamaica once stood as a beacon of international humanitarian leadership. We courageously defied Washington over Angola, championed the dispossessed in South Africa, Namibia, and Mozambique. Our moral authority extended globally because it was grounded in genuine principle. Today, we can't even extend basic humanity to our Caribbean family.

In 1804, Haiti became the first free black republic in the Western Hemisphere, defeating Napoleon's army and ending French slavery not just in Haiti, but inspiring uprisings across the Americas. Haiti gave sanctuary and military support to Simón Bolívar on the condition that he abolish slavery in the lands he freed.

Let it never be forgotten: Haiti gave sanctuary and military support to Simón Bolívar, liberator of much of South America, on the condition that he abolish slavery in the lands he freed.

Yet when Haiti knocks on our door, we slam it shut.

The Price of Moral Bankruptcy

From January through mid-December 2024, foreign governments returned nearly 200,000 people to Haiti despite the risk to their lives and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' call to extend refugee protection to Haitians. Jamaica's contribution to this unconscionable statistic represents more than policy failure—it constitutes a betrayal of our foundational values.

The human cost is incalculable. Indiscriminate gang violence in Haiti has led to an alarming escalation of human rights violations, with pervasive violence including sexual violence, kidnapping, looting, and forced recruitment by armed gangs. Returning refugees to this hellscape violates every principle of human decency.

Meanwhile, our government's hollow rhetoric about monitoring Haiti's situation rings increasingly false. In recent discussions with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Holness acknowledged that "the extraordinary humanitarian, civil, and national security challenges in Haiti pose an acute threat to Haitians, to regional stability, and indeed to its close neighbors, including Jamaica." If we recognize the threat, why do we compound it by sending people back to face it?

A Call for Redemption

Jamaica stands at a moral crossroads. We can continue down this path of shameful expedience, prioritizing imagined economic constraints and racist prejudices over human dignity. Or we can reclaim our heritage as a nation that shelters the persecuted and champions the oppressed.

The solution demands immediate action. We must halt all deportations of Haitians until their country stabilizes. We must establish transparent asylum protocols that respect international law. We must leverage our CARICOM leadership to create a unified regional response based on solidarity rather than rejection.

Most fundamentally, we must remember who we are—or rather, who we should be. The spirits of our liberation heroes cry out for justice. The legacy of our struggle against oppression demands better.

From a toothless tiger, we have devolved into something far worse—a nation that has forgotten its own liberation story. In treating our Haitian brothers and sisters as unwanted intruders rather than family in crisis, we have diminished ourselves immeasurably.

History will judge this moment harshly unless we act to redeem it. The question remains: Will Jamaica choose to be remembered as the nation that abandoned its Caribbean family in their darkest hour, or as one that honored its heritage by extending the same sanctuary we once desperately needed ourselves?

The choice, and the shame, are ours alone.

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