RASTAFARIAN elder Bungo Isaacs is calling on the Government to show greater respect and recognition of the faith while at the same time pleading to all Jamaicans to live in love and unity.
Isaacs was addressing a room full of Rastafarians, attorneys including Chief Justice Zaila McCalla, and students at the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre at the University of the West Indies on Thursday at a lecture held under the theme ‘Coral Gardens 1963: A legal analysis and implications for the Jamaican justice system’.
The event coincided with a period commemorated by Rastafarians as ‘Black Friday’, also known as the ‘Coral Gardens Incident’. ‘Black Friday’ actually refers to two days of violence involving Rastafarians, which started on Holy Thursday (April 11, 1963) in the community of Coral Gardens in St James and continued into Good Friday leaving eight people dead including three Rastafarians.
The incident led to an islandwide crackdown on Rastas by agents of the State and citizens at large and some members of the faith were imprisoned, some killed and others faced severe harassment.
Isaacs, who lived through that period, shared briefly with the audience at the lecture, his experience. The Rastafarian elder lived about three-and-a-half miles from Coral Gardens and said that the police came seeking him out “like when man go into the bush to go seek wild hog, to show their brutality and opposition to Rasta”.
He complained that Rastafarians have always been shunned by the Government and the religious establishment.
“We never count as people, therefore in the time of Coral Gardens it seems like the words of the ruler come to pass, to handle the Rastafarian community with brutality... Where is the justice for the innocent? We got no justice,” said Isaacs.
“We have to love one another. The Government has to love Rasta. Stop ignore Rasta,” he pleaded.
The Coral Gardens Incident in 1963 can be traced back to February 1962 — according to a Gleaner report at the time — when a Rastafarian named Rudolf Franklin was shot, arrested and subsequently imprisoned, as a result of a land dispute with the overseer of a farm on the Rose Hall Estate in St James. On Holy Thursday in 1963 six armed Rastafarian men led by Franklin attacked several properties in Coral Gardens in the parish. Three were killed.
The resulting violence prompted public calls for retaliation against the Rastafarian community, which lead to the islandwide manhunt for the other three gunmen in the group, which according to members of the faith, was used as a pretext for the persecution of the brethren throughout the country.
The Rastafarian elder also used the occasion to plead for national unity.
“Let us unite ourselves together and recognise the fate of man and woman, for he who spits in man’s face spits [also] in the Almighty’s face,” Isaacs pleaded. “From you start to frown, and hating an individual the Almighty is against you, so let love and purity and honesty rule among the I and I. One love and one heart.”
