Is mediation lost?

Business Associations are vocal in their complaints about the crime rate in TT.

And it is violent crime, mainly committed by the poor on each other, and spilling over against the affluent, that is their primary concern.

I have not heard a peep on the dishonesties and indignities heaped on all of us by business; mislabelled products, unsupported warranties, underweight produce, broken delivery promises, late completion schedules, shoddy work and price cartels.

But it is not only violent crime for profit (robbery and kidnapping) that has increased. There is an even greater escalation of violence for its own sake, violence for an unclear purpose. In November last year, six or seven persons in Barataria were shot, but not robbed, whilst sheltering from the rain. Drive-by, walk-by, run-after street shootings are a daily occurrence, and every week some one or two other people are shot in their homes or in their beds – all by gunmen who then flee, taking nothing but life. The police explanation is “drug-related” or “gang-related” as if this both explains and excuses the criminals’ action and the police inaction, on the basis that the victim was probably a criminal too. Conceptually this seems but a short step from Police death squads.

Something sinister is occurring in society. Violence has returned as the preferred arbiter of disputes. We have returned to the age of holmgang and duelling but without the honour and rules by which these ancient practices ensured a degree of equality.

Amongst the Norsemen of Scandinavia and Iceland a wronged party could challenge any other person to holmgang. Killing an opponent did not incur any punishment. However, due to abuse of the system by professional fighters, holmgangs were outlawed in the 11th Century.

In 17th and 18th Century Europe and America, duelling was a respectable and accepted manner for resolving disputes, and was governed by strict codes of conduct. Equality was ensured by the requirement for both parties to agree on the weapons and the rules. As law enforcement became more efficient and the authority of central governments strengthened, duelling subsided through the 19th Century.

Aggrieved parties fought with the spoken word and the arbiter of disputes was the judicial system. Although the poor and the illiterate were largely disenfranchised from these benefits, they had traditional forms of arbitration through religious groups, extended families and the accepted wisdom of elders.

Independent arbitration, has a long history of preventing or ending conflict between parties unable to reach consensus. The United Nations was specifically set up to arbitrate international disputes in order to prevent war. Closer to home, the WICB and WIPA agreed to independent arbitration on matters they have been unable to reconcile by direct negotiation.

Even organised crime has largely avoided physical conflict, establishing arbitration systems through neutral third parties when ‘turf’ could not be divided by a meeting of the dons. The gang wars of the movies are the exception, but sex and violence fill cinema seats, not a couple of old men talking.

In TT, as in other parts of the world, the traditional arbiters for the poor and under-privileged are disintegrating and disregarded. Most people do not have the financial or educational resources to fully participate in or benefit from the law. They feel isolated from and abandoned by the judicial system. The impartiality of the police and the courts is doubted. The populace do not trust the police to catch the perpetrators of crime, and likewise, they expect their own unlawful acts to go unpunished.

And what message is passed on from the most powerful amongst us? Last year, a US Army officer, explaining the use of white phosphorus in the 2004 offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, said “The combined effects of the fire and smoke - and in some case the terror brought about by the explosion on the ground - will drive them out of the holes so that you can kill them with high explosives.” So, if I understand this correctly, first you terrify them so much they bolt like rabbits, and then you blow them up. I’m confused; I thought that’s what the bad guys did.

The message to the rest of the world is clear, some violence is legitimate. What is not clear is who decides which conflict is legal and which is not. In the past the warmongers invoked legitimacy in the name of the Church or God, now it is in the name of freedom and democracy. Whichever side you may support, the message is the same. If you cannot negotiate consensus or compromise with your opponents and you will not accept or do not trust independent arbitration, then the legitimate course of action is to kill them. When the political process fails, the military process is deemed just.

Many people in Trinidad and Tobago feel they have no one left to articulate their complaints, to speak on their behalf about what matters to them, to faithfully and strongly lay their case before society’s arbitrators. They do not trust the independence of third parties to solve disputes.

The weapon of the word has been lost to them, the verbal duel taken from them. The weapon left to them, the equalising weapon of their choice, is the gun.

The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Guardian Life.

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