SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth : Colonel vows to revive flogging for criminal acts....Accompong will be no safe haven for wrong doers, says Maroon colonel, Ferron Williams

BY GARFIELD MYERS Editor-at-Large South/Central Bureau myersg@jamaicaobserver.com  Monday, April 20, 2015    

SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — The Jamaican Parliament abolished flogging as a means of judicial punishment in 2013.

Residents of Accompong interact with Deputy Superintendent Paul Bernard
of the St Elizabeth Police.

However, Ferron Williams, who was returned as colonel of the Accompong Maroons in an election last Thursday, told journalists he intends to have the practise revived for criminal and anti-social behaviour, subject to the dictates of the Maroon Council.

In such matters, Williams told the Jamaica Observer Central in a follow-up telephone interview on Saturday, Accompong should not be considered subject to Jamaican law since it was "a State within a State" with its own customs, traditions and culture.

Indeed, according to Williams, under the terms of the Peace Treaty agreed between the Maroons and British colonisers in 1738, murder was the only crime which should require the intervention of the Jamaican authorities.

"In such cases we should hand them (alleged murderers) over," said Williams, who recently retired as a member of the Jamaica Constabulary.

Ferron Williams was re-elected for a second five-year
term as colonel of the Accompong Maroons.

Maroons are the descendants of African slaves left behind by Spanish colonisers when the British captured Jamaica in the 1650s, as well as runaway slaves from British sugar plantations. Maroon communities in the Blue Mountains of eastern Jamaica and in the Cockpit Country, including Accompong in the island's west, resisted British occupation for decades prior to the 1730s peace treaty.

Williams's assertion of the intention to resume flogging came in the context of recent incidents, including the destruction by fire of his home in Accompong.

He said he was determined to ensure that "Accompong will not be any safe haven for wrong doers".

Williams told journalists that "on the day before nomination my home was burnt, it was torched..." He claimed his life had also being threatened in the build-up to the election. more