Addressing Issues of Violence, Drug Abuse, and Media Influence: Prime Minister Mottley's Statement

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley issued the following statement today addressing issues of violence, drug abuse, social media and video games.

The latter, she said, was having an impact on behaviour, making some desensitised to violence.

She said the country would not surrender to the few.

The full statement follows:

Good evening, everyone. Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to do something that I don’t normally do. I wrote down my thoughts that I wanted to share with you today.

In this conversation, I do not want in any way for any word to be misplaced or indeed for anything to be omitted. I have already spoken to you about the role that law enforcement in this country must play in curbing the surge of violence, about the additional resources and approaches taken by the Police Service and about the legislative changes that we must bring to increase the efficiency of our court systems and indeed to modernise our criminal justice system which is caught in a 19th/20th century position.

We will continue to speak to you on these issues as we must.

But today my friends, this is a conversation with Bajans and all who live here and who love our country as if it were their own. This country of ours is great because when it has mattered most, we have always come together to confront and rise above challenges. We have done so throughout our history and certainly in my time as leader.

We’ve saved our way of life by saving our dollar and we’ve saved lives and livelihoods as we fought to overcome the personal and societal dread of COVID-19. We have grown stronger to fight this new reality of ours, this climate crisis, and we will continue to work together to become even more resilient because we’re not where we need to be to fight that battle.

But my friends, we must now come together again to confront the tendency towards violence in this country, a violence driven by anger very often and the inability or unwillingness to resolve conflicts peacefully.

We face the scourge of greed and gangs fighting for dominance and territory and we’re seeing a rising incidence equally of mental and physical abuse. The mental health challenges have been compounded especially since COVID brought the restrictions on movement and individual choices. You remember indeed from the same room I addressed you many times.

These matters are made worse by other issues that we must consciously control as leaders wherever we are; whether as parents or guardians and godparents or indeed extended family or neighbours, friends, employers, members of the community, sporting or cultural groups in which we interact. And we must do so whether in our homes, our place of work, our businesses, and indeed we must do so where we worship, in our churches, our mosques, our temples, wherever we go for religious or spiritual worship. We must immediately address the absence of religious and moral grounding of our children.

We have talked about it for too long without serious progress. We must teach them and they must learn the basic difference between right and wrong and the need to respect human life, their own lives, and indeed that of others. We need to control the inappropriate use of social media to circulate memes that hurl insults or share videos that denigrate groups like young women, young girls, or promote the attraction of guns or indeed the sending of direct messages to issue threats and to deliberately generate fake news, news that we know to be fake.

We must monitor and balance the excessive screen time and exposure to violent content. This nation’s children are being desensitised to violence through the non-stop playing of video games and the overuse and misuse of social media through the cartoons that they’re watching in some instances. It is interesting that it is called social media as it quite often leads to anti-social behaviour and this is now being recognised the world over.

This overexposure desensitises not only the children but indeed some of the parents to the presence of guns and killing. Our children, my friends, are spending hours on these devices, pausing only to eat and to drink and returning to the games where they have been killed multiple times for the day already.

And they’re still playing and after a while what happens? Killing means nothing to them. Everything on social media is a trend and unfortunately we have seen gun violence trend not only here but globally reminding us of the fragile nature of our peace.

Zero tolerance for guns and drug abuse must not only be engaged and articulated by law enforcement, but across our society; in our institutions, in our homes and indeed yes on our blocks. You know, Judge Judy has a saying that if a song’s too good to be true, it is normally not true.

If the bulging pocket in your son or your grandson’s or granddaughter’s or your best friend’s pocket looks like a gun, is shaped like a gun, it bulges like a gun, my friends it is most likely a gun.

By closing our eyes and remaining silent we are indirectly authorising its indiscriminate and unlawful use. This is a stage at which as parents, as guardians, as godparents, as teachers, as brethren and sistren on a block, we need to say to each other this is not the right way to go. It will not, this will not have any happy ending. Get rid of it.

And if you don’t trust them to get rid of the guns then ask them to hand it to you and you give it to your pastor if you don’t want to surrender it to the police. We must find a way to reduce the number of guns in this society even as the police do their job and the customs and others do their job to restrict their entry into Barbados.

My friends, a shooting does not come like a sudden rain or an earthquake. There is usually notice, and the notice starts with the presence of a gun. As I speak to you today there are many parents or indeed there are many brethren and sistren from blocks and communities who know persons in possession of firearms. The presence of these firearms is going to cause problems. They’re going to injure or kill people. Do not wait until it is too late. I remind you as I say all the time; guns don’t walk, guns don’t talk, guns don’t do none of them things on their own.

Equally the abuse of drugs is also something that we have to deal with as a society. We know the reality. Many start with trying a thing, trying a cigarette, trying a spliff. That is not even so much the problem, but it is when that trend leads to four and six and eight a day and when people start to move on to other drugs; drugs that take control of your mind, drugs that will embarrass you in the eyes of your peers, your friends, others, because you will be exploited and you’ll be made to look foolish in front of all, in front of everybody and you aint going have no capacity to fight back, because the drugs have taken control of your mind.

I remind us all the time Usain Bolt, Sada Williams, Dwight Yorke, none of them could be where they are today if they did not take care of their minds and their body. If they drank or smoked in a way to affect their lungs far less anything else, where would they be? Certainly not recognised by others globally.

You cannot do 30 minutes of extra time in football if your lungs can’t carry it. Who are you fooling? 30 on top of 90 minutes and your lungs can’t hold it? Who you fooling? Let us look at the athletes recently in Cricket World Cup who were just here. They needed to be at their sharpest and their fittest physically and mentally in order to win.

My friends, we need to be real and be prepared to turn the corner as a country as it relates to this issue of guns and drug abuse. While many people can accept that life can be balanced when we do things in moderation, and perhaps that’s the majority and that’s a good thing, but there’s always always danger with abuse. That is when you lose control and everything starts to unravel.

We have to confront this issue of the illegal carrying and use of guns in our country and the escalating use and abuse of drugs and alcohol, not just drugs. We confront and talk about everything else in Barbados, everything else. So why not when we see signs of wrong? I’m appealing to you, talk with who you can trust, talk with who you can relate to, but always talk with who is causing the problem.

Better to open your mouth now and talk, than to hold your belly and bawl. I’m telling you. We cannot and must not take therefore justice also into our own hands. That is not our role.

Don’t let’s get tied up with that. Justice is the duty of law enforcement. The brave members of the Police Service and others who are here to protect each of us and to uphold the law. Equally, our courts must judge who is guilty and who is not, not you nor me, unless we sit in front of jury. Where we must step up individually and collectively is in our commitment to take back our common peace in Barbados and to show love and respect to one another.

And let me give a few examples. Let’s start with our language. Let us talk with each other, not to, not about, and certainly not at, because you know where that can end up. Let us truly see each other and talk with each other.

Let us listen to one another, even if we disagree and even if sometimes you dislike the body. Let us feel for and understand each other. We have had our own way in this country for resolving conflict for the most part. We’ve also learned the art as Bajans of living on a small rock together, even when we disagree. I urge us to continue on this Bajan way. This is our way.

Don’t let us allow foreign influences that would call for rapid escalation of disputes to a point where there’s no coming back. We know better. We know how to walk away and let cool heads prevail. We’ve done it all along. This swiftness to anger will only reap despair and death. We have seen it play out elsewhere if we are to be truthful. Do not bring it, my friends, into our way of life. This is not who we are and we as Bajans know better.

Our grandparents have always told us a word to the wise is sufficient.

If you see your child with cash or with possessions that way out of sync from what they’re working for or how much they’re earning, do your own sniff test. Tell them like it is. Tell them, “I like what you got there. It look good, but tell me where you get it from.” And to the women and girls, I say to you, if you’re receiving a gift from somebody, beware that you don’t get caught up in something that you didn’t bargain for, especially if the gift is out of the pay packet of the person that giving it to you. They can’t afford it out of their pay packet, you know something wrong. You’ve got to connect the dots, as the young people would say, the math and mathing.

Our world, our Caribbean, is full of examples of what will happen when we take in other people’s values and other people’s way of doing things. It is equally clear what will happen, my friends, if we do not commit as a nation to step up. We must remember that we learned as children and insisted on passing it down, and I going remind you now again, “Hard ears you won’t hear, own way you going feel.

We know better and we know what will happen. And you cannot therefore be surprised if you know what will happen when you make certain choices.

My friends, what am I telling you? If we see wrong, say something. If we can correct a child or a teenager, let we talk with them. Let we talk with them, and if we are not their parents or guardians or godparents or teachers, let we talk to those who are as well.

Teach them also, our children, our teenagers, that sayings like the golden rules still matter. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These got to be practised every day in every action that we do. It must become a habit. Let us teach them to work together, understanding that many hands make light work. This means leff out the fussing and the fighting with each other. Leff out the shouting and the cursing. But stay together as friends. How we can work together as friends or as teammates? How we can work together as a community? How we can work together as a family? We must not, my friends, be divided by loyalty to groups or gangs that have nothing at all to do with Barbados. They wouldn’t even know the difference between Six Roads and Six Mens. They wouldn’t even know how to stir cou-cou or what cou-cou is for that matter. What are we talking about? We have to remain faithful to who we are because those things that they would want us to do, are not who we are.

Let us, my friends, therefore respect life and respect each other. I’ve never seen a body riddled with bullets walk, yet, never once. Once the body dead, they dead. The only time a sharp blade can help you is when it is held by a surgeon, not a person fuelled by rage or a body wheeling a cutlass like if they’re going mad.

So I want us to pause and reflect. I have personally faced other times in my life when the challenge often seems daunting and indeed unlikely to overcome. And believe me, when I tell you that I know what it is equally to confess that I shall walk; even if it is me, just me, and my God alone. Because there are some things that you have to be prepared to just do because it is the right thing to do.

So as your leader, I pledge to take the first step. As I say to Bajans, let us walk the walk. Let us STEP up and every act as parents, guardians, godparents, to correct wrong from right and to hold each other accountable in our jobs and in our relationships, our friendships, our workmates. Let us consciously cut out violent language in our families, among friends, and across groups, including the political groups and the sporting groups, including when we liming or drinking.

Let us resolve to express how we feel and talk it out with each other. I wanna repeat myself. Let us tell each other how we feel and let us talk it out with each other calmly.

Let us give one another the benefit of the doubt. And if you feel you need to step back and take a cool head, step back and come back again. If wrong is still being perpetrated, then let us use the systems that we have, the police, the courts.

You can even go for mediation and counselling. You can do arbitration, whatever it takes. And these fancy words don’t mean formal people because in every community and every family, they got somebody who will ask you to pray for cool ahead and to take it down, take it down. Let me deal with this tomorrow. Take it down. We do not need only formal systems to be able to resolve conflict.

I don’t expect perfection, my people, because that belongs to The Divine. We know that. But I do believe that the majority of us can do better because we can and we know better and we can claim that wrong because we know better. And equally, we know the consequences of not doing better.

It’s a choice and I say let us do better. Let us STEP up together and work with one another to do better and to keep the common peace and to love and respect one another on this little rock we call home. We sing Bob Marley music all the time and Bob never talked about denigrating a woman, Bob never talked bout doing something to somebody to kill them off. We know better.

I am up for the challenge. If you are, I’m asking you to STEP up and be counted. Sign your name on history’s page as your first sign that you are committed to building the habits for yourself and nurturing the habits of others around you to make peace in what we do, in what we say, and in what we think, in our words, our deeds, and our thoughts.

We are all leaders in some way, whether it is in the family or the workplace or the community or on the block. Find ways to let others know that this is your mission, our mission as a Bajan people. And I call now formally to let us all agree that our religious services this weekend from Friday to Sunday across the entire island, that those services send up prayers for those who have fallen and for the strengthening of the resolve of all of the rest of us living here for a peaceful Barbados, to build the common peace in Barbados. I saw the picture, the powerful picture today, of the three mothers in white as they carried their vigil out yesterday evening. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and all of the others who have lost family.

But equally, I say that if we want to stand in solidarity with all of you, I ask now every Barbadian, each of us, to pause for five minutes this Saturday, July 20th at midday, for silent reflection wherever we are, whatever we are doing, other than of course the essential services. I know it is Crop Over and I know it is Kiddies Kadooment, but it is important that we pause and reflect for five minutes, even in Kiddies Kadooment at midday, to send a signal that the majority of us want to build the common peace. We want a peaceful Barbados and that we are committed to stepping up and putting in the hard work towards it.

I equally ask our radio and television stations to pause for this five minute period and to play appropriate music for reflection, to be able to encourage the building of a common peace in this country.

My friends, I am saying to you, let our faith and our conscience guide us at this pivotal moment as Bajan people. And let the handful that believe that it is their duty to cause panic and to take life in this country know that they shall find somewhere else and go. But that is not who we are, nor who we want to become. Let us work with others to help those who may need encouragement or guidance, and even help those who simply, my friends, may not know better, because we can’t assume that everyone knows better.

In addition, I call on all summer camp leaders, because I know that school is out, to take time on Monday morning to speak to their kids in their care and to step up equally on this journey with us. The basic rules that we have always been taught must be reinforced in our children, whether in schools or summer camps or religious institutions, to ensure stronger values. They must live them and we must teach them how they must use them.

How to be honest, compassionate, caring, courteous, fair; I’m just mentioning only a few, but we all know what they are.

Let the better angels, my friends, of our spirit, guide us as Bajans and know that wuh ain catch ya aint pass ya. Be wise. You all see me always speak to people using Bajan sayings that have been tried and tested across generations. That is because people understand what I mean when I say them. Not because I can’t use different words, I choose to speak in this way, because these sayings resonate with our people and have done so for generations.

Let us therefore show why our ancestors were able to confront even greater challenges than we face now. Challenges then that were outside of their control from slavery right back down. They ensured that resilience is part of our national DNA. We can rise to work together to determine what we do, what we say, and where we go as a people and as a nation.

It is, my friends, it is Bajans, our choice, not someone else’s. These things, unlike the challenges faced by our ancestors like slavery, these things are in our control. Each of us can choose to do better.

So let us step up. Whether we See, Touch, Engage, and Participate. S-T-E-P. See, Touch, Engage, Participate.

Let us embody these principles and let us become champions for the common peace in Barbados and respect ourselves and respect each other. I am saying to you, this is the only way if we want to build a common peace.

The choice is yours to STEP up and to make that difference. I pray that you do the right thing each and every Bajan and send that clear message.

Thank you and may God bless our country. May God bless our people and may God give us the strength and the capacity to discern right from wrong and to do the things that we know we need to do to maintain the way of life that we cherish so much.

We will not surrender to a handful.