Mary Francis
Saint Lucians should be blamed for the delayed response to the IMPACS report, which linked police to alleged extra-judicial killings between 2009-2011, Human Rights Activist Mary Francis has said.
In commenting on the recently released 2015 US Department of State Human Rights Report, Francis said the document has nothing new, as it again highlights the alleged police killings.
“We the people have to blame ourselves, because we got locked up in the partisan politics and we are not seeing past our noses and we could not be bothered,” she told St. Lucia News Online (SNO) on Monday.
Francis questioned if she were to call a meeting to organise a protest in relation to the slow response to the report, how much people would turn up, stating that Saint Lucians want the issue to become a ‘political football.’
“They expect the Americans ultimately to get it over and done with, and bring closure, but we have to also play our part. We are not playing our part, so it’s becoming a political football for both parties.”
The human rights activist also concludes that the integrity of the process has been undermined because so-called excerpts of the report has been allegedly published in the local press.
She said, “I have not heard anything from the government. The whole thing has become a farse because of our inaction.”
The United States which had used the incident to cut back on aid to Saint Lucia, highlighted in its 2015 human rights report, the long delays in investigating reports of unlawful police killings.
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