EDITORIAL: A glimpse of a normal world - after a jab

As of Thursday, April 22, 2021

PRIME Minister Dr Hubert Minnis dangled a carrot yesterday for those still reluctant to get their vaccinations. The world can start getting back to normal – if you’ve had your jab.

Had your full set of jabs? No need for a test to travel to and from New Providence, Grand Bahama, Abaco, Exuma and Eleuthera.

Full exemption from travel requirements once you meet the vaccination requirement.

Even more, you can get back to indoor dining if you’re completely vaccinated. Missing Junkanoo? You can get back to the shacks and working on costumes together if you’re all vaccinated.

This is what we want, right? A return to something close to normal. And to get it, we just have to get past all these scare stories told by Facebook friends or Whatsapp whisperers.

It certainly has businesses delighted. Robert Sands, the president of the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association, hailed this road map for getting back to normal, and called the Prime Minister “gutsy”.

Others have called it a “game changer”. Look at it from the tourism industry perspective – our biggest customer base is the United States, where vaccination has been going on at pace in recent times.

Hotels and tourist businesses are hearing from would-be customers who have been fully vaccinated, and now they’re raring to go exploring the world again after a year and more of being cooped up during the pandemic. And they want to come here.

This lets them arrive and enjoy the world again, safe in the knowledge that they have their shots – and lets businesses here offer them their services.

Want to join them? Get your shots, both of them, then take a seat at the bar again and enjoy a meal with your vaccinated friends. That’s the deal.

Is this fair to those who don’t want to get their shots? Well, perhaps once enough people have been vaccinated to ensure herd immunity, it’ll open up to include you too, but until then, this limits the chance of spreading the virus while allowing businesses and citizens to tiptoe back towards normality.

It’ll take some enforcing – we’re sure there’ll be people who say they’re vaccinated but who aren’t really, and we’re sure there’ll be those who are vaccinated but can’t prove it and that may lead to awkwardness and confusion.

But it’s a start. There are those who for medical reasons may not be advised right now to get their vaccinations. But for those who can? The biggest step back to a pre-COVID world that you can take is to sign up for your doses – as soon as you can.

Stolen liberty

How many times must we hear the same story of people being detained without charge and for years on end unlawfully?

The latest is a Ghanaian man who visited The Bahamas. His three-week vacation turned into a near-seven year detention when he lost his documents during a jitney ride. A tourist turned into a prisoner in an instant.

During his time in detention, he says he was beaten several times, and his elbow is regularly in pain after being struck by a baton.

He was never brought before the courts for any breach of immigration laws and never made the subject of a deportation order. He was just left to rot with no apparent intention to give him a chance to challenge his detention.

The Attorney General, along with the Minister of Immigration, the Commissioner of Police, the Director of Immigration and the officer in charge at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre all conceded liability to Joseph Amihere’s claims of “intolerable and inexcusable” treatment while being unlawfully imprisoned. They didn’t even have a case to fight him with.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because these cases keep coming up, and the government keeps losing them. How about the seven asylum seekers from Cameroon who were held in detention for nearly two years and then released when the government couldn’t even explain why they had been held? That was just this month.

How about Douglas Ngumi, who was locked up for six and a half years before being awarded more than $600,000 in damages? Or Matthew Sewell, locked up for more than nine years despite never being convicted of a crime? Or Atain Takitota, locked up for being a homeless foreigner and who spent eight year behind bars and tried to kill himself three times in Fox Hill prison?

When Douglas Ngumi’s case hit the headlines in December last year, the Attorney General and the Immigration Minister denied knowledge of any wrongful treatment of people still in the system. Well, here we are, with Mr Amihere. Did they know about him then? And if not, why not? More to the point, who else is still in the system, wasting away for years because we can’t manage to get someone in front of a court in a timely fashion and seem content to deprive people of their liberty rather than resolve a case?

It is no wonder our international human rights reputation is so poor when locking people up for years and brutalising them is so commonplace. This must stop – but the silence from our leaders about trying to change this system shows that we will probably be here again, writing about another case of someone’s liberty being snatched away unlawfully.

Perhaps the message is getting through. For the first time The Tribune can remember, in Mr Amihere’s case, the government has agreed to apologise.It’s a start.

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DDK 3 years, 6 months ago

Tribune, you do seem to be in the pocket of the covid. lunacy. BTW, who edits the editorials? I believe you mentioned something about RARING to go exploring the world???