Grenada
Speech by RJG
Malcolm
X Library
August
19 2007
The Last Prisoners of the Cold War Are Black: The Grenada 17
1. Read Maurice Bishop Speech on Opening of Revo.
2. Read Selections of Apology from Grenada 17 about
end of revo.
My focus is the revo period and the aftermath, but to
do that some background about Grenada
12 north latitude off the coast of Venezuela, about
80,000 citizens now, about 100,000 in 1979.
Twice the size of Washington DC with about 1/8 the
population. Part of British Commonwealth, about 60 percent Catholic, others
Anglicans and other protestants, evangelists growing fast.
Economy based in tourism (2/3rds of the economy) ,
offshore banking, agriculture like mace, bananas, and nutmeg, and as a
transhipment point for illicit drugs. Claims a literacy rate of 96 % which is
flatly unbelievable.
History, Originally the Caribs who first defended the
island against Columbus, but who could not defeat the genocidal French and the
Caribs, under assault, committed mass suicide on the north of the island. Rule
shifted back and forth between the French and British, finally ceded to the
British. Some French names of people and places persist, as does an
English/French mix in the language, but for the most part, this is a British
colony.
In the 50's a young, brilliant, elegant, handsome,
agitator and orator, and leader of Grenadian trade unions led a fight for
independence. Gairy born in 1922 had an extra edge. He believed he was an agent of God. Later in life, he
told me he WAS God.
Gairy was a bon vivant, a womanizer, a firm believer
in flying saucers (introduced a UN resolution urging the body spend more money
on UFO investigations) he was spending about 1/4 of Grenada’s gdp on his own
investigations. Gairy believed, moreover, that he could control the minds of
people by manipulating what he posed as electromagnetic waves, which he could
control with specific hand motions. Knowing that, watching him mesmerize a
crowd with yet another scintillating, if strange, speech, redoubled the interest.
Gairy, to a great degree, won his first fight. He won
limited independence for Grenada from Great Britain following a massive general
strike that lasted about 3 months in 1974. He was extraordinarily popular among
rural and urban workers, but his biggest base was the rural population.
However, at the same time, Gairy became what he
proclaimed what he set out to oppose, he became a dictator and grew
extraordinarily wealth through use of his position. Gairy brooked no opposition
and, as the country’s wealth was largely being picked off by Gairy and his
associates, there was little left for a rising educated middle class.
Influenced first of all by Fanon, and later by notions
of Black Power drawn from quarters as wide as Stokeley Carmichael, Rap Brown, Julius
Nuyere, W.E.B. Dubois, C.L.R James, The Pan African Congress, and later still
by Marx, Lenin, and Castro, a young radical opposition grew, not out of
nothing, but from a long history of resistance to oppression in Grenada, back
as far as the freedman Fedon who, in the 1790's, upped the ante of the French
Revolution by declaring, “Liberty, Equality, or Death!” It took months to
defeat Fedon.
Led by a tall, handsome, equally loquacious, British
educated lawyer, Maurice Bishop, several different groups came together in the
late 60's and early seventies to become the New Jewel Movement. The Joint
Endeavour for Welfare, Education & Liberation (JEWEL) One of Bishop’s first
claims to fame was a successful defense of a 197- nurse’s strike–leading
to militant support from the nurses throughout the New Jewel’s life.
In response to growing unrest on the island, Gairy
formed the Mongoose Gang, his own private police force, thugs trained by,
first, the Ton Ton Mou Coups of Haiti, and later the Chileans. At the same
time, Gairy doubled the size of the police force, and aimed special
intelligence divisions at New Jewel. Members of the Moongoose gang were known
to have murdered the father of the Bishop’s father.
Now, remember the tiny size of Grenada, the fact that
many many people are related to each other, that rumors out run news
operations, especially then, and you can see the tangle of relationships that
always arise in any social struggle.
In 1973, New Jewel drew up a list of grievances
ranging from bad wages to the lack of civil liberties on Grenada, and held
Peoples Congresses all over the island. Gairy responded, on Bloody Sunday, by
having Bishop, Hudson Austin, Selwyn Strachan, and others, arrested and
severely beaten. In 1974, Bishop and others were arrested again, this time for
seeking to overthrow the government. He was later freed.
But Bishop, his close friend, the exacting Brandeis
educated Bernard Coard, and his wife Phyllis, author of one of the most widely
read texts in the Carribean about racism and the education of children, firmly
believed Gairy would kill them. That fear grew in 1979 when Gairy circulated a
rumor to that effect.
Then, on March 13, 1979, under the code name Operation
Apple, New Jewel launched their revolution, really a coup. Two people were
killed. The radio station and telephone services seized, no problem. The troops
surrendered almost immediately. Bishop issued his declaration. The “revo” was
enormously popular. Gairy was in the US at the time, visiting former UN General
Kurt Waldheim, a Nazi war criminal. Gairy remained in Grenada throughout the
revo period, consistently organizing against New Jewel. The short duration of
the Grenada revo may have done it more harm than good, as masses of people were
only peripherally involved in it: spectators.
Then New Jewel initiated a variety of programs: in
agriculture, expanded crops and processing plants, in education a focus on
literacy and a high tech work force, in commerce, a new phone
system, one of the best in the Carribean, dozens of
home construction projects, over 160 other construction projects by 1981. Cuba
sent teachers, medical workers, social workers, construction workers—for
a new airport to build tourism. Paulo Freire arrived to lead the literacy program, which became the
domain of Bishops paramour, Jackie Creft.
The old airport was a mess. Something of a cow pasture
up in the mountains, a perilous and stomach churning landing followed by an
equally nasty drive to St Georges, the capital. The airport would be key to
economic development, even if tourism and obsequiousness are usually
synonymous.
Bishop, during this period, wrote down his personal
priorities:
In Bishop's own handwriting - a notation on his
official biography, he appeared to summarily itemize the principles for which
he stood:
1. Black Power - Nationalism
2. Anti Imperialism/Non
Alignment/Striving for genuine Pol & [unclear] Independence
3. World Peace - Caribbean a
Zone of Peace/Caribbean integration
4. Struggle for Workers Rights
5. Struggle for Women's Rights
8. Fight against Racism -
Southern Africa (CALD)
7. Genuine democracy - Grass
Roots structure for real participation & involvement of all the masses
However, the Revo ran into all the problems of
socialism:
The
theory of productive forces, that abundance must be achieved before equality
can be won, that abundance can only be won by a massive increase in production,
that requires leaders, usually from the vanguard party, and experts, both seeking
pay and privileges for their extra work, and it requires industrial discipline,
in the national interest, nationalism, so the work force must be won to, not
ideas about class struggle, but about production itself, which also leads to
problems of internal democracy, contradicted by rising inequality, and
industrial commandism emanating from leaders. The theory of productive forces
means inequality will someday be overcome by the benevolence of the party,
which has yet to happen. It means that, “we are all together in one nation
working to boost production,” supercedes, “all of history is the history of
class struggle.” This is theory which propelled the USSR, which moved China to
the New Democracy stage, and was under attack during the Cultural Revolution.
Inequality had its personifications in Grenada. Bishop
personally owned, according to Adkin, at least three houses at Parade, plus
four apartments at the Quarantine Station. His official residence in Mount
Wheldale was across the road from the home of Bernard and Phyllis Coard.
This theory plagued the nominal socialists, Marxist
Leninists who were the New Jewel. But we also must remember that while the
leadership of New Jewel was mostly well educated, comparatively, they were also
very young. Bishop was 33 in 1979, and he was one of the olders.
Their socialism was eclectic. Bernard Coard who was
recognized by the UN as one of the most exacting and honest national economic
leaders in the history of the Carribean, shopped throughout the world for loans
and grants. New Jewel wanted ideology in all ways. It linked itself with the
Socialist International, to which Freire's Workers Party now also belongs,
created deep ties with Cuba--especially through a close friendship between
Bishop and Castro, and at the same time courted Soviet support. While the
tendency in the U.S. might be to see these allegiances as folds in the same
cloth, the reality is that in this period there was frequently bitter rivalry
between the groups---and New Jewel played a dangerous balancing game.
Nevertheless, the NJM followed the Cuban model, a tentative independence yet
finally reliant on Soviet support.
From the outset, it was clear that Maurice Bishop's
mass popularity was pivotal to New Jewel's acceptance. People were drawn toward
Bishop, but while NJM held mass meetings to discuss matters like the economy,
there was never any serious question that decision-making in Grenada flowed
from the top down. NJM was a small party, a true vanguard, even for tiny
Grenada.
Bernard Coard played a background role, moving into
the interestingly conservative role of the nation's banker where, in a brief
period, he stabilized the national economy and lowered the percentage of
Grenada's debt service to 3.5%, the lowest in the Southwestern hemisphere and
1/10 of what it is today. During Coard's tenure, remarkable for his
"financial acumen and his honest, efficient and cautious management",
Grenada received a glowing report from the World Bank and, more
demonstratively, received loans from the often impecunious International
Monetary Fund.(517) The construction of an international airport, vital to the
New Jewel program, required an incredible act of will, against the grain of
most of the capitalist world. The driving will here was Coard's who is sometimes
reified as an apparatchnik, a party automaton, but whose works provide evidence
for a much more serious critique.(518) While Coard favored a mixed economy,
nationalizing some key industries like the fisheries, he also pressed had to
turn the vast majority of landholdings into workers' cooperatives. For a
workers' party to survive long, it was important to create a working class and
here education was expected to play a vital role. Coard's goal, at every turn,
was socialism established on the base of national economic development, which
itself depended on the theory of productive forces. The New Jewel economy was
modeled on the Soviet New Economic Policy under Lenin, a transitional program
to build capitalism under a benevolent guiding state.(519) The New Jewel
leadership saw itself as "way, way ahead of the people"
ideologically.(520)
But the visible and popular measures were led by
Bishop and his companion, Jacqueline Creft, the mother of Bishop's son,
Vladimer. Bishop took main responsibility for translating the New Jewel
programs to the people---to bring news of the new day care centers, plans to
rebuild schools, and the announcement of the arrival of Cuban medical
assistance, doctors, nurses and trainers as well as an exchange program to
train Grenadian medicals in Havana. Bishop also had a habit of promising new
homes to anyone who asked, a problem Coard had to follow on and resolve, by
denying the possibility, making Coard far less popular. And Bishop took on the
task of enlisting Canadian, Libyan, and Cuban help in constructing an
international airport, the vital link in national economic development, if not
self-sufficiency.(521) This was not a serious effort at wholly independent
socialism in one country. What Bishop and Coard sought to accomplish for
Grenada was a new, nationalist, form of colonization, perhaps more
sophisticated than the Cuban approach.
Delivery to meet the high expectations of the
Grenadian people would have been difficult in itself, but the party predicted
and received the immediate hostility of the United States. The Grenadian coup
was the first of its kind in the English-speaking Western hemisphere and was
not welcomed by the U.S.. It's important to remember that the New Jewel leaders
were acutely aware of the implications of the Monroe doctrine--that the U.S.
and its CIA had crushed the democratically elected government of Guatemala in
1951, had overthrown and murdered the elected government of Allende in Chile,
had invaded Cuba to attempt to overthrow the popular government of Fidel Castro
and later tried repeatedly to assassinate him, had engineered the removal of
the Jaggen government of Guyana in 1964, and had invaded Santo Domingo with
Marines in 1965 to support a rightist junta.(522) New Jewel leaders,
particularly spokesperson Bishop, warned of U.S. intervention from first
moments of their takeover
The U.S. immediately began to warn tourists away from
Grenada and, with the assistance of the government of Barbados, the jumping off
place for most Grenadian flights, began to delay and harass those who tried to
go. Every overblown fancy of the New Jewel leadership had a not-so-neurotic
basis.(523)
New Jewel banned papers purportedly established by the
CIA and jailed the country's most prominent journalist, Alistair Hughes. Formal
elections were never held even though no one questions the fact that if Bishop
stood for a vote he would have won convincingly. NJM was too much of a
socialist party of the traditional type to allow elections, even though they
made repeated promises, before the coup, to hold elections quickly.
Even so, NJM sought to confiscate the state, not smash
it. They established the Peoples' Revolutionary Government (PRG) which, as many
locals knew, was merely "synonymous with the central committee of the NJM"
The facilities NJM inherited from Gairy were
dilapidated--classrooms were falling apart. The curriculum was colonialist,
that is, the majority of students lives at home were denigrated and denied
while, at the same time, they were prepared for industrial work that simply did
not exist. Education was a major New
Jewel priority. The goal, as Bishop had stated early on, was to turn all of
Grenada into one big popular school and, importantly, to win genuine democratic
participation from the masses of people.
However, in describing the point of the project,
Bishop said the purpose was, "..to develop the productive capacity of our
society since it is only through an expansion in production that the standard
of living, including the education system, can be improved".(532) But the
mode and means of production were decidedly capitalist, in part because the PRG
was apprehensive that the people who supported the NJM reform measures would
not otherwise work, that is, capitalism with a kindly overseer was "necessary
to avoid social and economic disintegration".(533)
Bishop was more pointed about the purpose of school
under NJM just weeks later: "We must produce the skills that can be
absorbed in our economy...we must produce the agriculturalists, the mechanics,
the hoteliers, the engineers, the boat captains,..that we need to man our
agriculture, our agro-industries, our fisheries, our tourism..."(534)
Further, NJM leaders reiterated their belief that what
must first be developed is the productive forces of society, via science and
technology, and that technological/industrial advance would necessarily lead to
an early stage of socialism.(535) Another minor motive might be found in that
some people in the illiterate population were seen by New Jewel as Gairy's political
base.(536)
The New Jewel abolished the secondary school fees,
began to initiate day care centers, started regular teacher training sessions
one full day a week while the children joined local workers in examining the
nearby factories, fisheries, and collective farms. But there were serious
tensions with some of the traditional teachers who opposed the NJM curriculum.
The Grenadian teachers conducted a wage strike in 1981. The new government
pleaded poverty--and passed laws making public worker strikes illegal.(537) New
Jewel also imported science and math teachers from the U.S.S.R. and Cuba.(538)
To combat adult illiteracy, NJM established the
Committee for Popular Education (CPE)
The literacy program reflects how the NJM progressed,
and retreated, during the brief course of the revo.
Describe the first interactive books, the popularity
of the literacy campaign, the move to CPE textbooks, the forcing of people to
attend classes, the disintegration of the classes, the inward turn of NJM under
pressure to meet Bishops promises, and pressure from the US.
This is where I came in. I went to Grenada in 1980, on urging of people in
Detroit, including members of the Detroit City council which was establishing
close ties with Grenada. I returned in 1982 but was only able to stay about a
week due to a death in my family. I came back in 1992, again in 1994, and spent
a year there in 1996, most of it in Richmond Hill Prison, interviewing the
Grenada 17. I returned, for about three weeks in 1997.
Early in the PRG's life, "without a doubt, the
greatest economic success was in obtaining loans and grants from other
governments and international organizations". In the PRG period, of $62.3
million total grants, Cuba gave $36.6 million. Iraq gave $7.2 million (and plenty
in kind. Grenadian school children were given thousands of exam books with
photos of "The Leader President Militant Saddam Hussein" on the
cover.) Of $47.3 million in loans, Libya gave $10.4 million. Of $15.5 million
in military grants, the U.S.S.R. gave more than $10 million. Even with the
growing influx of outside help, by 1982, the PRG faced renewed high
unemployment, unstable prices, production for profit, and inequities in wage
distribution: capitalism.(555)
Soviet cynicism goes beyond hard-headed direction as
to what not to do. It involves what is to be done. There is evidence that the
U.S.S.R. used Grenadian NJM leaders within the Socialist International, as well
as within the U.N. to press the Soviet's interests.(556) For example, the
little colony of Grenada, in the midst of the ocean of one colossus, supported
the Afghan invasion. Later, after the U.S. invasion, Grenada refused to support
sanctions against South Africa.(557)
By the time of my second visit to Grenada, the
promises from the NJM were ringing empty with the people. A celebration of the
anniversary of the revolution was a tragi-comedy. A small outdoor stadium was
sparsely filled with a crowd from the military, civil servants, the uniformed
nurses (ever-loyal to Bishop), and children. NJM officials (and I) sat in
shaded seats while the crowd in the hot sun happily ignored speeches from PRG
leaders and foreign dignitaries--until Bishop spoke. Then, even with reality
peering cruelly over his shoulder, the crowd came alive with his speech
promising that "those who do the work now hold the reins", hardly the
case, even in the hot stadium, but still appealing to the sense of hope and the
attack on alienation that carried New Jewel for fours years.
All was not barren vows. The preventative medical
system was still intact, reaching into hundreds of Grenadian homes, mostly
because of the highly respected Cuban doctors and nurses---respected by the
masses of people but held in contempt by many in the traditional Grenadian
medical force. Interestingly, the several hundreds of medical students in an
American owned off-shore med school on the island seemed to never have
interrupted their parties as the revolution flowed and ebbed. They kept alone,
in splendid isolation on the beach.(558)
In 1982 the U.S had carried out a practice invasion of
a nation code-named "Amber" (Grenada was known as part of the
Ambergine Islands) in a remote area of Puerto Rico. In '82 and '83 a series of
terrorist bombings targeted key New Jewel leaders. The American Institute for
Free Labor Development and the local Seaman's Union (both with ties to the U.S.
CIA) consistently opposed every significant NJM move.(560) There were reports
of deep tensions within the New Jewel hierarchy--with Coard and the vast
majority of members of the NJM Central Committee attempting to discipline the
free-wheeling Bishop who was repeatedly criticized, and was self-critical, for
his unrestrained approach to democratic centralism, his willingness to make
promises with no hope for delivery, his lack of attention to detail, and his
"idealism". After hours of internal struggle, the NJM leaders agreed
that Bishop would have to be joined by Coard in Joint Leadership. Bishop saw
that as an attack on himself. Coard, I believe, actually thought a deal was
made.
In October 1983, Bishop and others left Grenada,
ostensibly for a tour of Eastern Europe. There are many indications he made an
unscheduled stop in the US. He did make an unscheduled stop in Cuba and met
with Castro.
On October 12, 1983, the day after his return, Bishop
initiated a rumor to be circulated by his bodyguard that Coard was planning to
kill him. In Grenada such a rumor can circulate throughout the country in less
than a day-and can be deadly. A similar rumor, that Eric Gairy intended to kill
Bishop and others, preceded the initial NJM revolution in 1979.
Bishop denied he started the 1983 rumor. .
This set in motion a series of events that finished
off the revo. The assembled NJM party witnessed a meeting in which Bishop was
exposed as having caused the rumor. Even so, the party members also all knew
that Bishop was the key to whatever credibility the party still had among the
people. They also knew the U.S. was openly threatening the government. The US
had staged widely publicized invasion exercises, "Amber and the
Ambergines," making its intentions clear. By a wide majority party vote,
Bishop and Coard were both ordered to their homes, Bishop under arrest.
Negotiations began to overhaul the way the party was functioning. Coard met
with the Cuban Ambassador, Julian Rizzo, and came away feeling he had been
threatened by Castro himself.
On 19 October 1983, a mob of thousands led by people
who had traveled to Cuba with Bishop marched past armed personnel carriers
(APC's) lined up in front of his home, freed "We Leader" Bishop, and
(under curious banners like "We Love the US") began to move to the
town square. No one in the APC's moved to stop the crowd.
Before the crowd moved to Bishop's house, a Cuban
military outfit arrived at the downtown Fort Rupert (now Ft George). They had
not reported in days and were turned away by the commander on duty from the
NJM.
In the town square, where rallies were traditionally
held, microphones were set up for Bishop to speak to the people. Bishop could
have easily mobilized nearly the entire population of the island to come to the
square to support him-and that probably would have been that.
But now led by Bishop and his friends, the crowd
turned and marched on a nearby fort where arms and TNT were stored. Bishop
demanded that the commander of the fort turn over his weapons. He did, and was
locked in a cell.
At this point, things become murky. An award winning
Grenadian journalist, Alastair Hughes, famous in the region for his resistance
to the NJM and his courage, saw the crowd move to the fort and bolted home,
rather than cover the news. Bishop moved his cadre to seize the radio and
telephone centers, as had the NJM in overturning Gairy a few years earlier.
From another fort on a mountain about two miles away, where Coard and others
gathered, Peoples Revolutionary
Army APC's were ordered to quiet the mob.
I interviewed people who were on the APC's and many
people who watched what followed. The soldiers on the APC's were, for the most
part, hardly crack troops. They were mainly youths who had enlisted to get the
money to buy shoes for their families. One had deserted out of loneliness and
been brought back the previous day. They rode on top of the carriers, in full
view. As they approached the fort, fire came from the mob. The commander of the
first APC, one of the few experienced soldiers in the group and a highly
respected officer, was killed by sniper fire, immediately. Discipline appears
to have evaporated on all sides. Fire was returned. The APC’s overwhelmed the
mob.
No one knows exactly how many people were killed and
wounded. No firm count was ever made. There are films of people leaping over a
wall at the fort (why a film-maker was so poised with such a powerful camera is
an interesting question).
In any case, Bishop and other top leaders of NJM,
including his pregnant companion Jackie Creft, were killed- after they had
surely surrendered. The remaining leadership of NJM imposed a curfew on the
island. In part because important documents taken from Grenada during the
invasion remain classified in the U.S., no thorough-going investigation of this
day's events has been possible.
In retrospect, the women leaders of the Grenada
revolution who were not jailed felt that male chauvinism played a significant
role in the collapse of the revo. From 1979, the women of New Jewel, by their
statements, had done, by far, the largest share of the party’s work, while the
men frequently partied. After four years, the women were exhausted and simply
did not have the energy to seek some kind of reconciliation between Bishop and
Coard and the rest of the group.
Shortly afterward, on October 23 1983, 241 US troops
were killed, blown up in their barracks in Lebanon by a truck bomb.
US President Ronald Reagan took to the TV, announcing
he had discovered, through satellite photos, that the Cubans were building a
secret Soviet_Cuban military airstrip in Grenada-a direct threat to US
security.
Show
the History Channel Video.
Actually tourists were frequently taken to the
construction site at the airport-a widely publicized symbol of Grenadian pride.
US students from St. George's Medical school jogged by Cuban and Grenadian
construction workers each day on the airstrip. The main financial support for
the airport came not from the <U.S.S.R>. nor from Cuba, but from Margaret
Thatcher's Britain.
Reagan declared the US medical students to be in grave
danger from the crisis in Grenada, said that the NJM was a threat to all
regional security. He got the organization of Caribbean nations to back
him_with a big payoff to those who went along-- and invaded a country the size
of Kalamazoo with a massive military force, under a precedent_ setting news
blackout. The US had practiced the invasion of Grenada as early as 1981.
Though the medical students were radioing out that
they were in no danger-except from the possibility of an invasion-- US rangers
"saved" them, after U.S. jets bombed a mental hospital.
Remarkably, it is clear that Fidel Castro was
forewarned of the invasion and that Cuban troops tasked to stop the US landing
at the new airport never fired their weapons at the Rangers making parachute
drops on the runway_until the Rangers attacked them. The Cubans had told the
Grenadian military that they would defend the airport area.
The invasion of Grenada (popular among most Grenadian
people sickened by the long collapse of the NJM) was complete in a week. It
was, however, denounced as illegal by the U.N. Security Council, by Margaret
Thatcher and the British government, and by a myriad of US congress_people.
The international press, including US reporters, was
cordoned off from Grenada during the invasion. US ships intercepted reporters
who rented boats trying to get to the island, arresting them and detaining them
until after the invasion was complete.
The US, however, quickly recaptured its post-Lebanon
image as a military super-power.
Seventeen NJM leaders were charged with the murder of
Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, and others, though most of them were nowhere near the
incident, could not have participated, like the commander of the fort who was
locked in a basement Fort Rupert cell.
The NJM leaders were tortured and signed transparently
bogus confessions. According to affidavits filed by former U.S. attorney
general Ramsey Clark, and Amnesty International, the NJM leaders were denied
attorneys. They were tried by jurors who chanted "guilty" at them
during jury selection, in trails led by judges hand_picked and paid by the U.S.
They were unable to make a defense in the kangaroo atmosphere. Their lawyers
were subjected to death threats and some fled. Key witnesses, like a bodyguard
who was present when Bishop created and ordered the death threat rumor, were
denied the right to testify. Fourteen of the NJM members were sentenced to
death. In 1991, after an international outcry, the sentences were commuted to
life. Typically in the Caribbean, a life sentence amounts to around 15 years.
The three remaining prisoners, low-ranking soldiers,
were sentenced on several counts of manslaughter. On appeal, their sentences
were reduced to fifteen years. With their time now served, the Grenadian
government still refuses to release them, the prime minister saying that the
judiciary has no right to override the government-or a possible vote of the
people.
In prison, the Grenada 17 were systematically abused
by guards and others for eight years, according to statements made to me be a
former prison warden and several guards. Abuse was especially horrible for the
lone woman, Phyllis Coard, who was held in near_total isolation for years
simply because few women are jailed in Grenada. In 1991, after their children
had been introduced to the fellow who was to hang them from a prison courtyard
gallows, the Grenada 17 sentences were commuted to life.
Prison Commissioner Winston Courtney was pivotal to
halting the torture. Courtney had himself been held in Richmond Hill jail,
imprisoned by the leadership of the NJM without charge for more than a year.
During that period, Courtney's son was killed under questionable circumstances.
He had reason to believe that the NJM was involved. During the latter days of
the NJM's term of power, Courtney was expelled from the island. He returned to
be the warden of the prison in the early 90's, holding the prisoners who once
held him. Courtney immediately moved to stop the abuse, to create a disciplined
yet humane prison that emphasized rehabilitation. He worked 18 hour days to
overcome the habits of Richmond Hill, eventually sacrificing his health and
eyesight. When asked why he did this, Courtney said, "I am an ethical man
and if I do not do this, I am nothing."
The New Jewel leaders are still serving time in a
prison built in the nineteenth century. The last prisoners of the cold war are
black. Their health is rapidly fading. Despite immense obstacles created by
prison officials over the years, the NJM prisoners are conducting one of the
most successful literacy campaigns in the country. Less than two in ten of the
program' grads return to the Richmond Hill jail.
Winston
Courtney Video
As of October 2004, the NJM prisoners, will have
served 21 years. Phyllis Coard was released in 2000 to seek cancer treatment
abroad, following an international campaign on her behalf. She is still
expected to return to the jail following treatment. Three soldiers who were
sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter were released in 2007, having served
nearly 24 years, on orders of a British appeals court which, later this year,
released three more of the men, making it the Grenada Ten today.
I filed a Freedom of Information suit demanding
documents which were seized by the US and kept out of the trial. The US
military commandeered tons of documents in Grenada immediately following the
invasion. The documents were sifted and some of them later appeared in a book
called the "Grenada Documents," edited by Michael Ledeen, now an Iraq
war hawk who calls for the invasion of Iran. US intelligence agencies denied my
request for more documents. I sued.
The suit came to court in Detroit on November 10th,
1997, after delays of more than one year. In October, 1998, Judge Hood gave the
U.S. government thirty days to give me the documents. To date, the US has
released a ream of blacked_out material, some of it indicating that the US
clearly interfered in the trial of the Grenada prisoners-and paid the trial
judges. However, the US insists that the remaining documents were all returned
to Grenada. The Grenada government denies ever receiving the material.
In October 2003 Amnesty International has issued a
detailed report, demonstrating their conclusion that the Grenada 17 were denied
due process in their trial: "the trial was manifestly and fundamentally
unfair." The selection of both judges and the jury were tainted with
prejudice. Documents that might have contradicted key prosecution evidence were
denied the defendants. Instead, prison guards forcibly took materials from the
prisoners that they had prepared for their defense. Defendants were not allowed
to present key witnesses whose testimony would have undermined the testimony of
the sole prosecution witness, Cletus St. Paul, one of Bishop's bodyguards, who
claimed he overheard Coard and others ordering Bishop's liquidation. Errol
George, also a Bishop bodyguard, was not allowed to say that he was right next
to St. Paul during the time in question, and heard nothing of the sort.
In 2002 I interviewed Grenada's ambassador to the US,
asking him why his government is so determined to keep the Grenada 17 in jail.
He replied that he, and the nation's current leader, Keith Mitchell, believe
there will be riots if the Grenada 17 are set free. The possibility of serious
civil strife in Grenada, about anything but the corruption allegations aimed at
the Mitchell regime, are actually quite negligible, as leaders of the
opposition party and the country's leading paper, the Voice, tell me.
I spent 1996 in Grenada interviewing many of the
jailed NJM leaders. To say they are innocent of everything is not the case. To
say they are innocent of the charges brought against them is. Serious mistakes
were made by the New Jewel leadership. The prisoners have issued extensive,
indeed insightful, apologies to that effect, taking responsibility for the
crisis of the revolution, but not for the murders they did not commit. Their
continued imprisonment is a mysterious yet great wrong that needs to be
righted. The truth of the Grenada revo, and its destruction, needs to be known.
Why did Bishop march on the Fort and issue orders to overthrow a government
that could not oppose his popularity? Why did Alastair Hughes run home. Why
were there signs carried by member of the mob calling for a US invasion? Why
was General Ochoa, a Cuban General who ran the ports of Grenada from the day of
the revo til a month before its end (removed by Coard’s action) later
scapegoated for the Cuban involvement in drug transhipments, that is, executed?
What role did he really play in Grenada.
Who
Are the Grenada 17?
# Austin,
Hudson ‘H.A.’ also ‘The General’
# Bartholomew, Dave ‘Tan’
# Bernard, Callistus ‘Abdullah’
# Coard, Bernard
# Coard, Phyllis*
# Cornwall, Leon ‘Bogo’
# James, Liam ‘Owusu’
# Joseph, Vincent - released 2 December 2006
# Layne, Ewart ‘Headache’
# McBarnette, Colville ‘Kamau’
# Mitchell, Andy - released 2 December 2006
# Prime, Cecil ‘Dumpy’ - released 27 June 2007
# Redhead, Lester ‘Goat’ - released 27 June 2007
# Richardson, Cosmos - released 2 December 2006
# Strachan, Selwyn ‘Sello’
# Stroude, Christopher ‘Chris’ - released 27 June 2007
# Ventour, John ‘Chalkie’