Stephen Vasciannie | Assessing Accompong assertions

The Maroons are a distinct but divided people. Some Maroons find their national identity through full membership of Jamaican society as Jamaican nationals, engaging in Jamaican cultural life, sharing as Jamaicans in the pleasures and pains of Jamaica life, attending Jamaican institutions, and conforming to the dictates of Jamaican law. They regard themselves as part of the “one” Jamaican people who have emerged from the historical “many”.

Other Maroons challenge the Jamaican focus, maintaining instead that they are a separate body of people living in a different country from Jamaica. They hold fast to the view that Maroon areas are sovereign states, or states within the Jamaican state. Each such area is thus an imperio in imperium, with its own sovereignty, rules of law, leadership and institutional arrangements. Each area, too, has the right to grant nationality and citizenship rights, print its own money, flog and whip some criminals, grant licences for driving, and undertake matters associated with the sovereignty of an independent country.

JDF AND ACCOMPONG

This situation raises a question of the first order of importance for Jamaica: are Maroon claims to sovereignty, meaning full, final and independent control over certain parts of Jamaica, valid today?

Chief Richard Currie, leader of the Accompong Maroons of St Elizabeth, argues that Accompong is a sovereign state. Not all Maroon chiefs in Jamaica seem to accept Chief Currie’s assertions in full force, but, over the last three years or so, Currie has been in the vanguard of the sovereignty position as far as Accompong is concerned. Recently, under Currie’s leadership, the Council of the Accompong Maroons expressly declined to accept assistance in Accompong from the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) acting, on behalf of the Jamaican government, to provide post-Melissa relief.

Prime Minister Holness, who has up to now firmly rejected the Currie sovereignty thesis, may find it important to reiterate that the decision to assist the people of Accompong through the JDF, or otherwise, rests ultimately with the Jamaican state, and not with the Maroon Council.

STRONGEST CASE

The strongest case for the self-styled “Sovereign State of Accompong” stands on three discrete legs, namely: (a) The 1738/39 Treaty between Cudjoe for the Maroons and Guthrie for the British, (b) The concept of self-determination as enshrined in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960), and (c) An argument based on the rights of Maroons as indigenous people of Jamaica. None of these arguments is convincing.

Consider the 1738/39 Treaty, regarded by the Maroons as a sacred agreement, marked in blood by both sides. Under its terms, the British granted liberty to the defined Maroon people, granted land in defined areas to the Maroons, and gave jurisdiction to the Maroon leadership over certain crimes committed in Maroon areas.

In return, the Maroons undertook to surrender all escaped enslaved persons after a specified date to the British, to serve as bounty hunters for the British, to defend Jamaica for the British, and to pay homage to the British governor annually. Among other things, the treaty also required the Maroons to have two British soldiers resident in areas owned by the Maroons, and have the British appoint the Maroon chief after the expiry of Cudjoe’s people.

No part of the treaty contemplated the establishment of a new state within the pre-existing Jamaican state. Similarly, the treaty did not seek to transfer territory to a new state. And, more generally, no provision in the treaty referred to a change in “sovereignty” from the British to the Maroons. Nor was this approach accidental: the treaty transferred land to the Maroons and granted them certain jurisdictional rights, but the British retained sovereign control.

SELF-DETERMINATION

The second leg of the Maroon sovereignty argument – self-determination – suggests that, today, the Maroons as a historically distinctive set of people have the right to specify their own legal status. They may choose sovereign, independent status for Accompong. The modern law of self-determination in the aforementioned UN General Assembly Resolution 2749 reflects customary international law. Resolution 1415 indicates, at paragraph 2, that “All peoples have the right of self-determination”, a form of words that could, prima facie, include the right of Accompong Maroons to opt for sovereignty.

But this suggestion is sharply cut down by two considerations. First, the same Resolution 2749 specifies, at paragraph 6, that self-determination rules must not be applied in ways that would disrupt the territorial integrity of an existing state. On the easy assumption that Jamaica is the existing state, Accompong may not successfully rely on self-determination today to break away from Jamaica – this would be disruption.

Second, the self-determination argument is accepted by many states as effectively applicable today in colonial contexts where a distant so-called “Mother Country” has prevailed. In brief, it is misguided to argue that today’s Jamaica is in a colonial relationship with Accompong.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE?

Finally, some Maroons assert that, as indigenous people in Jamaica, they have special rights to self-determination. Traditionally, the Maroons have not been regarded as indigenous people; but some modern treaties, such as the ILO Convention 169, recognise the possibility that Maroons may be indigenous people. Also, some modern scholarship maintains, using DNA and other methods, that the Tainos intermingled with escaped Africans from about the 17th century onwards.

No matter. Jamaica is not party to the ILO Convention 169, and we are not bound by it. And the DNA and other research may show only that, by a certain time in history, indigenous Tainos intermingled with enslaved, escaped Maroons. They have not demonstrated that the Maroons are indigenous. And also – no matter – even if the Maroons are indigenous people, they cannot disrupt Jamaica’s territorial integrity.

The strongest case concerning Accompong sovereignty remains a non-starter.

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