Doing your three years

March 16, 2006

Dear Sir,

I am writing in response to the letter from BAD, Bermudians Against the Draft, in The Royal Gazette of March 15. I served my country from 1998 to 2001. I didn't love every minute of it, but I am a better person for it.

Mandatory military service has been in existence since the age of the samurai. The concept of national service has evolved since to include not only military applications but civilian applications as well. To serve one's country, even for a brief period, is noble and honourable. It is also character building. The twin mandates of the Regiment are to assist the Police in times of national crisis or assist in the event of a natural disaster. The Regiment was embodied in September 2003 after Hurricane Fabian and played a vital role in restoring the Island's critical services notwithstanding the BIU's best efforts to destabilise that situation by calling a strike three days following that storm because of a CableVision dispute.

To the members of BAD I would say pandering to people's emotions undermines any credibility or integrity you may aspire to have as an organisation. I refer to your letter.

The process is a “blatant violation of young men's rights”. How so? We all enjoy an artificially high standard of living in peaceful country with no direct threats to our sovereignty be it from an aggressive neighbour or internal subversion. This should not be taken for granted.

Certain public figures would have you believe racial unrest is very possible and very near. Who would quell any civil disturbance if this ‘diabolical and inherently evil institution' were dismantled? Should Bermuda adopt Independence, who would represent the Island's safety and security then? Our understaffed Police Service or a non-existent military? Could an independent Bermuda raise, adequately fund and maintain a professional army with sufficient numbers to make it a viable unit?

Conscription is “modern day slavery”. You are trying to strike a particular chord however it does not resonate. The vast majority of this Island's public have enough common sense to realise some of our wayward youth could do with some discipline and direction.

This ‘Island version' is “racist, sexist, ageist and classist”. I agree with ‘sexist' insofar as only males are conscripted, but if you have spent any time in Warwick Camp you will see a microcosm of our society where a group of men of similar age are literally thrown together for a single purpose. That group includes doctors, lawyers, accountants, labourers, technicians, the unemployed or unemployable. I am a white banker. My sergeant was a black cement truck driver. Where is the racism and classism there? Oh, yes, my lieutenant was black as was my Company Sergeant Major. The more promising recruits are handpicked as potential leaders for either the Corporal's Cadre or Officer Cadet training but that too represents a mixed bag of society. As for racism, well you said it. I assume you have documented evidence of racism in the ranks and among the officer staff. You claim, “thousands were victimised”. Who are they, how were they victimised and why haven't they told their stories? You said this is “Bermuda's Abu Graihb”. That is disgusting. I have seen the Abu Ghraib photos. Unless you can show evidence of blindfolded privates, forced to stand in stress positions, stripped of their clothing and dignity, being physically beaten into forced sexual acts and set upon by dogs for the enjoyment of their Regimental peers, I think you better come up with a different analogy. That simply is not true. Unless you can identify a single Regiment soldier who was beaten to death or smeared with human faeces and paraded on a dog leash, I suggest you retract that comment.

I find it curious that you deride the Defence Board for issuing the report ‘anonymously', however I see no names appearing under your own letter.

It is true some have had a tougher time than others in the Regiment. Mainly I would suggest that is because those people chose to make life difficult for themselves. By not showing up on time, not doing what you're told, by being mouthy and violent, yes, you will have a very rough time. You will be locked up. You will be fined. You will be put on the stop list for travel. Get out of line in Jamaica and you will be sent to Red Fence and you will miss your R&R. If you choose to ignore the constant warnings about not smuggling dope back into the Island from overseas trips, you will be caught and walked past your family at arrivals in shackles straight to jail. Life can become very unpleasant indeed and it will all be self-created. Keep your mouth shut, eyes straight and work hard, your time will go by. You might even learn something. There are many ways the Regiment can be improved as a training tool for Bermudians. The review of the Regiment established that and it is critical that those changes be implemented. Rather than excoriate conscription as a means to an end, why aren't you taking a more positive approach and supporting National Service generally, encouraging the younger generation to participate in making the Island a better place?

Conscription will always have its detractors. It is an easy target and a popular one. However doing the right thing isn't always popular, is it? National Service should be mandatory for males and females. That service should extend not only to military service but also the fire, police and ambulance services and senior care as alternatives. Some of these options already exist, albeit loosely, and not as part of a larger, structured National Service programme. If you are a genuine conscientious objector, you will have alternatives but you should not be allowed to walk away from your obligations to your country. The feasibility of such a programme would need to be assessed however given the Island's limited resources. Also, I would suggest anyone fitting the age requirements who has applied for Bermudian status or Long Term Residency status, be required to complete National Service. That is only fair to the rest of us who have ‘done our three years'.

GREG BROWN

City of Hamilton

Our divided society

March 16, 2006

Dear Sir,

May I comment on the letters by “In a Glass Darkly” and “Clemens of Missouri” in The Royal Gazette onMarch 15)? They both wrote of the “hatred” of Calvin Smith and the PLP. Whether their accusations are true or not they occurred because we are racially, a deeply divided society. Thus the real question is WHY are we so divided? One thing is certain, the PLP did not divide us. I grew up in a divided and segregated society, decades before the PLP came into existence. It was the white community which imposed, maintained and benefited from our segregation. Was that because they hated us? Certainly they reinforced and justified our deep racial division by propagating the concept that we as blacks were inferior. Accusations of “hatred” will only cease to exist when we are no longer a divided society. The PLP cannot change that because they did not create the division in the first place. It is obvious that with all of the “integrating” that blacks have done since the formation of the UBP, they have made no impact on the deep division because we are still divided.

They cannot change it because they did not create it. The white community which imposed the division are the only ones that can remove it, if ever it is to be removed, because they are the only ones who imposed it. They knew how to divide us and how to reinforce the division with the concept of their superiority so they must know how to erase the divide that they created, if they want to erase. But it is fairly obvious that most do not, since most do nothing about it. After all they are still benefiting from it. They just want black people to behave as if we are not a deeply divided society. And some blacks also want us to behave that way and never speak about the division and how it disadvantages us. But throughout the 1980s, under Sir John Swan, no one talked about it. But we remained divided, as Sir John Swan has since pointed out.

Limey has called for black people to give an account of their experiences, but throughout the early 1990s at the regular meetings called by NAR black people regularly poured out their hearts concerning their experiences but it did not matter because not very many white people were interested and the few that did begin to come ceased as they heard the repeated experiences of blacks. I am not very sure how many whites, besides Limey, are interested even now. In any case if they are genuinely concerned there is plenty that has been written about our experiences. Let them begin there before they charge all kinds of blacks with “hating”.

There is a role for blacks. They must begin by trying to place a value on themselves. I am not a sports person but I do know that cricket has been in the hands of the black Bermudian clubs with the Cricket Board being made up of black Bermudians. But I have been made to understand that once they had a $100,000 to pay out they went to look for a white non-Bermudian and created a special CEO role for him despite his history. Why, after all of the decades that they have been involved in cricket and administering clubs did they need a white non-Bermudian to administer their recently acquired $11 million? I cannot blame white folks for that decision because it was made by all black men. I cannot even blame the Government as much as I might like to do so. They were all black men, long involved in cricket, who felt that they must have a white administrator now that they had money, even if they had to change their constitution. Most of them probably had not voted for the UBP but they still felt the need “to return, symbolically, to the Plantation”. But merely throwing out rhetoric about “house niggers” or warning about “not returning to the plantation” will not solve the problem. We have been indoctrinated for decades with the concept of white superiority. It will take decades of an educational process to change any of this and for some blacks even then we may not make a dent. And I do believe that the PLP Government needs to recognise this need and needs to address it. In the meantime those whites who accuse the PLP of being held together by racial hatred need to recognised that since they want the divide, the segregation, and since they benefit from it, there is no point in getting upset and going off the deep end if the PLP uses this divide, which they have imposed, in whatever way they consider politically expedient.

EVA N. HODGSON