The Tribune

TAKING TO his Facebook on Friday lawyer Wayne Munroe, QC, recommended flogging of immigrants who enter the Bahamas illegally. In an interview with The Tribune he reasoned that “flogging” could be an effective physical and psychological barrier to people seeking to enter the Bahamas illegally. If illegal immigrants believed “we tortured and killed them, they might not come,” Mr Munroe argued.

We wager that if Mr Munroe were in the US and had dared to put such a threatening message on his Facebook in the climate of alarm and fear that exists there today, a federal law enforcement officer, gun in hand, would have been on his doorstep to discover who had radicalised him.

It’s bad enough that everytime one turns on the TV these days we are faced with a buffoon in the form of Donald Trump, with a dingy coloured mop on his head that passes for hair and puckered lips through which flows a torrent of lies, half truths and weird notions of democracy. The greatest shock of all, however, is the large following that this man attracts in a country that today leads the world. It would be this century’s worst nightmare if such a man should be catapulted into the presidential office by tunnel visioned Americans. That would be the day in which the world would indeed be spinning off its axis.

Donald Trump is bad enough. But to think that we have a replica here — and a QC no less — is intolerable.

Mr Munroe reminded us of the Loftus Roker days - Immigration Minister in the Pindling era – whose department hunted down Haitians with dogs, raided their homes in the dead of night, dragged them off while Bahamians stole their possessions. “People were running out of the country because of Mr Roker’s policies,” gloated Mr Munroe. They certainly were running, many to unseaworthy boats that sank with great loss of life. There are few people who can live with such atrocities on their consciences.

Nevertheless, Mr Munroe appears to consider brutality and inhumanity the preferable solution. It is certainly cheaper than paying their airfare back to Haiti, he reasons.

We understand that this is the same Wayne Munroe who is a Lay Reader and Chalice Assistant at St Margaret’s Anglican Church. If so, we suggest he have a quiet moment with his Maker and get some heavenly instructions on the meaning of Christianity. And every time he raises that Chalice he should cry out to heaven to be forgiven for suggesting the infliction of such inhumanity on less fortunate human beings. Maybe Mr Munroe should ponder on what it means to be one’s brother’s keeper - and the duty of being a member of the human race.

Mr Munroe pointed out that while Haitians were running from the Roker regime, “no one is running out of the country because of Mr Mitchell’s policies.” This might be true, but Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell has an uncanny way of making persons quickly disappear back to their homeland, especially if they have incriminating evidence that might be an embarrassment if they stayed to testify.

Mr Munroe should be very aware of this because in November 2013, it was no other than Wayne Munroe who was demanding the return of Cubans who had made serious allegations of brutality against five defence force office while they were in the Carmichael Road Detention Centre. Remember the case in which Mr Mitchell complained that a video of the beatings of illegal Cuban immigrants, smuggled to a Miami radio station, was fake? In fact it was not a video of the actual beating, but rather a re-enactment of the brutality with the detainees, in borrowed Bahamian officer’s uniforms, simulating the beatings. They could have only acquired the uniforms with the help of sympathetic detention officers. In fact, one of the Cubans was so badly beaten that he had to be sent to hospital to be treated for a punctured lung. The Tribune was sent photographs of their battered and bruised bodies, which we published. In fact, one of the Bahamian marines claimed that the Cubans were beaten so badly for two hours because they had tried to escape that one appeared to have passed out. After the beatings, it was claimed they were sprayed with pepper spray. There was supposed to have been an inquiry — behind closed doors, of course, with three “independent” observers to sit in on the hearings —no press allowed. But, where was the evidence? In Cuba, of course. Mr Mitchell’s department could be fleet of foot when the occasion demanded.

And it was no other than Mr Munroe, retained to defend the five accused Royal Bahamian Defence Force officers, who was demanding the return of the evidence. Of course, Mr Munroe pointed out that if the evidence was not returned to The Bahamas, The Bahamas would have to go to Cuba. Failing that, he pointed out, the officers would have no case to answer.

The case eventually disappeared into the sunset. There was no case to answer.

Of course, this brutality unleashed a howl of protests from the US against the Bahamas with threatened boycotts.

This is bad enough, but has Mr Munroe no sense of responsibility to his own people to at least try to maintain peaceful human relations in these islands? It is true that The Bahamas is too small to absorb all the Haitians who want to come here, and, of course, those who are illegal — if they can prove no reason to remain — will have to be returned to their homeland, but only after due process. There is no justification for irresponsible utterances from a man who should know that he is only adding fuel to an already smouldering fire.

If the Immigration Department had been efficient in processing the applications of those persons who have had applications in for many years for status here, they would have today been in a better position to concentrate on those who are now here illegally — and without beatings or torture.