JAMAICA | Extra-judicial executions likely. The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, has just issued her report on Jamaica, in which she says that it was her `distinct impression that extrajudicial execution on the part of the police, and possibly in a few cases also on the part of the Jamaica Defence Force, had in fact taken place.' It also suggests that the authorities have not done much to pursue such cases. Jahangir had conducted a fact-finding visit to Jamaica earlier this year (17-27 February) at the invitation of the government, following a series of allegations over several years - including Amnesty International's April 2001 report (Jamaica - Killings and Violence by the Police: How many more victims?) and expressions of concern from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
CENTRAL AMERICA | Under fire in Iraq. Three of the four Central American and Caribbean countries that sent troops to Iraq have come under attack in areas that had been considered `safe'. El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua — the only Latin American countries apart from Colombia to join the `coalition of the willing' against Iraq — provided a battalion each last August to serve for six months in the Plus Ultra multinational brigade, under overall Spanish command.
The Tegucigalpa base in Najaf, where 369 Honduran troops are stationed, came under mortar fire on 2 December, fortunately suffering only material damage. This was the second occasion on which they came under fire: in mid-September they were attacked with grenade launchers and assault rifles. On 3 December the Santo Domingo base, in Diwaniya, came under mortar fire, which injured three Iraqi civilians but left the 300 Dominican soldiers unscathed. For the Dominicans too this was the second attack: their base had come under fire in August. On 10 December, El Salvador's Camp Baker base, also in Najaf, came under mortar attack; there were no casualties.
There have been suggestions that the Honduran contingent might be pulled out if the risk becomes too great, and that the Dominican and Nicaraguan battalions might not be replaced when their first tour ends in February.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | Police violence criticised. The Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (IIDH), a dependency of the Inter-American Human Rights Court and Commission, has completed a report on `citizen security' in the Dominican Republic, in which it says that `the existing gaps in the local public security system have been used to justify security policies of an authoritarian bent, based on the increase of the police's discretionary powers [...] and the vindication of recourse to extralegal force as the dominant and legitimate mode of action.'
The local Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH), an NGO, says that since the beginning of the year there have been almost 200 `extralegal executions' in the country, usually passed off by the police as `exchanges of gunfire' with criminals.
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