This new force has not lived up to expectations. Though better equipped and more numerous than its predecessor, many of its officers have been described as `only marginally literate', and the upper echelons are still largely peopled by former members of the military. Scandals and pressures of various kinds led to the replacement of eight PNC chiefs (and four interior ministers) between 2000 and 2003. The PNC has been often cited, together with the army, as involved with the clandestine groups engaged in violence and intimidation against the political opposition and the media — the very groups that are about to be investigated by a UN-led commission that Berger has promised to support.
General Pérez's scheme to improve the PNC is to encourage the voluntary retirement of members of the military and recruit them into the police. He also wants to enlist former military personnel as officers in the prison service. Rights groups have said this will only compound the problem and hinder the investigations into the `clandestine security groups'. The Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) reports that in January this year it tallied 151 `acts of violence and human rights violations'. Of this total, 109 were murders. One category of homicide, murders of women, is about to come under UN scrutiny. The special rapporteur on violence against women, Yakin Ertürk, arrived in Guatemala in early February on a fact-finding mission. Of the January murders, those of women accounted for 15%; women account for just over half the population.
JAMAICA | Antiterrorist law amended. As a result of intense public pressure, the government of Jamaica has agreed to amend the draft Terrorism Prevention Act. One change has been a tighter definition of the offence of `facilitating' terrorist activity, deemed too vague in the existing text. Also, the director of public prosecutors is not to be allowed to proceed against any entity on `reasonable grounds' of involvement in terrorist activities: the targeted organisation or individual would first have to be included in a list of designated terrorist entities by the UN Security Council. With pressure now coming from abroad to enact the legislation, the hope is that an agreed amended text will be ready before the end of February.
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO | Army enlisted in policing. The government of Trinidad & Tobago has set up a joint military-police unit, in the hope that the army expertise in planning and intelligence analysis will help the police infiltrate and eventually disrupt organised criminal gangs, particularly those involved in kidnapping.
Last March the government pushed through legislation that tightened penalties for kidnapping. In May it ordered an overhaul of the Anti-Kidnap Squad (AKS) as a result of the public outcry over rising kidnap rates. The number of kidnappings for ransom, however, continued to rise, reaching 47 by the end of 2003, as compared with 27 in 2002. Members of the AKS complained in late 2003 that though they had identified many suspected members of kidnap gangs, they lacked the staff necessary to conduct proper surveillance and gather the evidence necessary to prosecute.
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