A day of shame
ROMAN Catholic priest, Monsignor Richard Albert last night used the platform of a function to mark the University of Technology’s 45th anniversary to cry shame on Friday night’s vigilante killing of an alleged car burglar on the UTech campus, with the apparent participation of students.
At the same time UTech president, Dr Rae Davis confessed to be “unsettled” by the incident which he said underlined the deep imbalances in the country.
“I haven’t had a chance to discuss anything with my colleagues, but I am pretty sure, like myself, they are all unsettled by what has happened, Davis said. “We just have to dialogue with one another to find out what went wrong and where do we go from there.”
But Albert’s rebuke was sharp and forthright.
“What happened was a moment of shame, not for you, but for us as a people,” he said in a sermon at an open air service at the Caribbean Culture Park at UTech. “The incident only challenges all of us to look at ourselves. It’s a moment in which all of us realise how brutal we have become.”
Earlier in the day, at a mass at his Stella Maris church to celebrate the Observer’s 10th anniversary, Albert had expressed similar outrage at the apparent involvement of students in the death of 23 year-old Ricardo Anglin of Mona Commons.
“It is a day of shame — a day of embarrassment that something like this could happen,” he told the Stella Maris congregation. “It is really a day of shame on our students — students who will be our future professionals.”
At time Albert, well-known for his work with the poor and underprivileged in Jamaica, had said that he was having second thoughts about attending, and preaching at the UTech service. He would pray about it.
In the end, he turned up for the function, delivered his prepared text, but peppered his wider call for tolerance with the specific admonition of students for the Friday night issue.
According to the police, Anglin was apparently among three men who were caught breaking into cars owned by people attending a function at the university’s Social Activities Centre.
The men were reported to have been chased and Anglin was cornered in an area near a cesspool towards the northeast end of the campus. The pursuers lit surrounding grass to cut off Anglin’s escape and he either retreated or jumped into the cesspool hoping to escape.
There are allegations that Anglin was stoned while in the pool of stagnant, smelly effluent.
His body was fished from the pit on Saturday after thousands of gallons of water had been drained from it. The police at the time did not rule out murder but said they were treating the incident as a case of drowning until the autopsy report was ready.
In his Stella Maris sermon, Albert, who is also director for the Pontificate Mission Society in the Caribbean, insisted that it could not be just to kill persons caught stealing and inveighed against a coarsening of sensibilities in the country.
“We are emerging in a culture of death,” he said.
At UTech, he told an audience of students, faculty and special guests that Friday night’s incident was “a moment unworthy of a civilised society”.
“All of us must pray that the viciousness of crime will not allow us to be what seems to be happening — becoming a society of death rather than life,” he said. “It is life that we must protect, and crime will only be solved when all of us recommit ourselves to rule of law.”
He urged the students to “become a hotbed of ideas and pressure for social change”.
“…But more than ideas, you must become a force that helps purify the nation and help us to realise our God-given destiny,” he said.
In his fuller remarks, prepared before he knew of the Friday night incident, Albert had in fact called for “tolerance and unity in the cause of national development” and spoke out against the society’s increasing anger and accommodation of death.
Said he: “We must recapture a tolerance for our differences, whether religious, political or economic. We regain a tolerance that will lead us to dialogue and not war amongst ourselves.
“We have grown too accustomed to death, struggle and anger. We must regain a sense of belief in ourselves and in our destiny as a people. We must rediscover the good in our society and cease to define ourselves as bad, corrupt and drug-infested.”