Research Institute for the Study of Man | |
The Earth Most Strangest Man: The Rastafarian by Mortimo Planno | |
The police and the Ras Tafaris are in the state of exasperation with each other,
which can lead to no good. The police have had to cope with a violent section of
the Movement, and have had to conduct security operations designed to discover the
limits of violent intention. Such operations are seldom gentle. Add to this the complications
of ganja hunting, plus the fact that policeman share the public's prejudice against
men who wear their hair long, and it is not surprising that there have been many
cases of arbitrary action by policemen against innocent people. This had had the
unfortunate result of wasting a valuable opportunity of enlisting Ras Tafari support
against violence. Many Ras Tafari brethren were shocked by stories of stocks of arms,
of foreign mercenaries, and of murder of Ras Tafaris, and so the moderates, who are
the great majority, might have been enlisted in stamping out violence. Instead, by
treating all Ras Tafari brethren alike as outcasts, the public and police have stimulated
their sense of common grievance, and may have strengthened rather than weakened the
ideological respect for violence.
The police have to keep in touch with potentically violent sections of the Movement.
Apart from this, they should leave innocent Ras Tafari brethren alone, stop cutting
off their hair, stop moving them on, stop arresting them on minor pretexts, and stop
beating them up. Violence breeds violence.
As for ganja, all experience shows that this trade cannot be stopped by trying to
catch the individual smoker. Police efforts should concentrade on finding out who
are the big traders who are making money out of ganga cultivation from a helicopter.