Tivoli Gardens Support Committee set up in UK

A checkpoint in Tivoli Gardens

The "Tivoli Gardens Support Committee UK" has been set up to advance the campaign for justice for the citiizens of Tivoli Gardens in Kinston Jamaica who were the victims of assaults and killings by the Jamaican police and armed forces in May 2010 when they moved in to arrest Christopher Coke, wanted in the USA for drug and arm-trafficking charges.

During the first two days of the operation, at least 74 people, including a member of the Jamaica Defence Force, were killed and at least 54 people injured. More than 40 of those killed in Tivoli Gardens are alleged to have been the victims of extra-judicial executions by the security forces. Two people reportedly taken into custody remain unaccounted for and may have been victims of enforced disappearance .

The UN Special Rapporteur on torture was called in to investigate early last year. In a scathing report he wrote, ‘…the rise in fatal shootings by the police, which are often alleged to amount to extrajudicial killings, as well as the apparent lack of investigation and accountability are of great concern’.

He added that although legal executions no longer take place in Jamaica, many insist these have been ‘replaced by extrajudicial executions carried out by the police taking the law into their own hands’.

read the background...
"Jamaica’s state policy of police extrajudicial killings" by Lloyd D’Aguilar...
download an information sheet...