Murder By Nunbers

The British newspapers have been reporting the sad and tragic story of the killing of a young British couple in Antigua following what has been described as a bungled robbery. That newlyweds on a honeymoon should lose their lives in such wanton and totally unwarranted attack is ghastly in the extreme. My heartfelt condolences go out to the families of Catherine and Benjamin Mullany. This is indeed a dreadful ending to a fairytale wedding and to think they were attacked on the last day of their holiday.

It’s hardly surprising that this has hit the headlines and the blogs. Antigua is an unlikely setting for this double homicide. Tourism is Antigua's main industry and about 33,000 Britons holiday there every year. It's a popular destination and a lot of tourists make return visits because they have had an enjoyable holiday. The livelihoods of many in Antigua depend on tourism and the authorities will no doubt try to reassure tourists that they it is safe to visit the country. They have taken steps to improve security at the resorts and have invited Scotland Yard to investigate the murders.

Some sections of the media have sought to portray the Caribbean as a dystopian hell hole, populated by a criminal underclass waiting to murder, defile and pick at the bones of unsuspecting European (Caucasian) travellers.

Although the killings took place in Antigua, the media focus has been very much on the region as a whole, the homicide rates of Jamaica and Trinidad were cited as evidence of the dangerousness of the Caribbean as a holiday destination. The Times even ran a story about another couple who had been held at gunpoint and the wife raped, the incident had taken place in St Lucia. She had kept silent but was now speaking out to warn others. We were also informed that the homicide rate in Antigua is three times that of New York. The statistic is derived by comparing the murder rate per head of population. In 2007, Antigua with a population of 82,000 there were 19 murders.

According to the Times, the murder rate is increasing across the Caribbean. There were 1,547 homicides in Jamaica in 2007 and the homicide rate in Trinidad and Tobago has quadrupled over the last 10 years, there were 388 homicides in 2007. It is somewhat of an anomaly as Trinidad & Tobago is relatively prosperous the mainly industries being oil and natural gas.

The violence in the Caribbean has tended to be drug and gang related in the main, it's a fairly universal theme. Crime and violence are global phenomena and regardless of country it’s normally the poor and the dispossessed who suffer. In Trinidad a 24 year old man and his 5 month old baby were shot and killed. In Jamaica the slaughter has thrown up many such stories of unspeakable evil. These stories tend not to feature in international headlines, and in both countries, Scotland Yard is rarely ever called and few murders are solved. As Stalin is said to have stated, ‘one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic’.

This is the first murder of a tourist in Antigua for 13 years, and despite the homicide rate tourists tend to be largely unaffected by the serious crime that plagues the local population. For the vast majority of holidaymakers their vacations will go peacefully and crime and particularly serious crime will only affect a minority, however as in the case of the Mullanys, life sometimes has a way of intruding even in a tropical idyll.

Our disgust at this despicable killing should not make us lose sight that in Antigua and the other islands the people who are mostly affected by crime are the locals: the vast majority of the murders on Antigua involve nationals, both as victims and perpetrators.