The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The Bahamas has the dubious distinction of having had the third highest murder rate among 13 Caribbean countries in 2013, per The Nassau Guardian.

Rightfully so, many Bahamians are embarrassed at how this country’s image continues to be blackened in the international press due to the bloody carnage. And this embarrassment has led some to scapegoat young Bahamian males of Haitian extraction.

This sentiment, which is a form of racial profiling, isn’t new. Even Bahamians of Jamaican heritage have not been left unscathed by this malicious slander.

I recall some years ago a Nassau-based tabloid and a prominent Baptist minister also arguing along the same lines.

Bahamians, they said, are not the type to use machetes, cutlasses, knives and guns to settle their disputes.

The typical Bahamian would use his fist or throw stones or just engage in a verbal spat. The violent carnage involving guns and other deadly weapons are unBahamian, they say.

Unwilling to come to grips with the reality that violent purebred Bahamian men are mainly responsible for the bloody carnage in Nassau, these Bahamians who are in denial have laid most the blame at the doorsteps of the Haitian-Bahamian and Jamaican-Bahamian communities.

A Bahamian gentleman recently told me that a member of the Royal Bahamian Police Force (RBPF) told him that the overwhelming majority of the murders and other violent crimes in Nassau are being committed by Bahamians of Haitian extraction.

According to the officer, these young Haitian-Bahamians are angry, bitter and deeply disillusioned with successive Bahamian governments for failing to address their age-old plight of statelessness.

They were born here to Haitians who are illegal immigrants. And because of this, they have no passport, affidavit, birth certificate, driver’s license, National Insurance card, Visa or any other important document. They are stateless. They are neither legal Bahamian nor Haitian citizens.

Without the aforementioned documents, it is very difficult to live a normal life in The Bahamas or any civilised nation for that matter.

These people cannot travel out of the country or even open a bank account. Hence their reason for attempting to destabilise the country through their unwonted acts of violence. This is the theory being posited by some purebred Bahamians, such as the aforementioned gentleman and the RBPF member.

I am not naive to think that each and every Haitian-Bahamian and each and every Jamaican-Bahamian are law-abiding citizens. I’m sure there are criminals in both of those communities as there are in every other ethnic group.

Admittedly, some of these murders have been committed by Bahamians of Haitian extraction. But anyone who believes that the overwhelming majority of the murders, armed robberies, rapes and other crimes are committed by Haitian-Bahamians are engaging in scapegoating and are living under a cloud of delusion.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama

January 19, 2014.