By Horace Helps KINGSTON, April 1 (Reuters) - Amnesty International chided the Jamaican government on Tuesday for what it called its failure to protect inner-city residents trapped by violence between armed criminal gangs and police. "Criminal gangs make up a small proportion of the community population, but their actions are devastating, they keep thousands of people living in constant fear and provide an excuse for government officials to label all community members as criminals," said the human rights organization's researcher on Jamaica, Fernanda Doz Costa. "We call upon the Jamaican authorities to urgently put in measures to tackle the underlying causes of public security and human rights crisis, which includes the reduction of the homicide rate in inner-city communities, the introduction of human rights-based policing and the reform of the judicial system to improve access to justice," Doz Costa said. The organization released a report that detailed incidents of police and gang activities that endanger inner-city residents. "Poor inner-city Jamaicans are paying the price of this public security crisis with their lives," Doz Costa said. "They are being held hostage in an endless confrontation between criminal gangs, police officers who kill with impunity and authorities who are failing to protect their human rights," she said. Amnesty said the Caribbean nation of 2.8 million people has one of the highest rates of violence and police killings in the Americas. There were more than 1,550 murders last year, while 272 citizens were killed by police. "Most of the citizens killed live in deprived communities where unemployment, education services, access to health care, poor sanitation and limited supplies of drinking water are prevalent," Doz Costa said. Two inner-city community activists also called on Jamaican authorities to protect their citizens more. "The police believe that nothing good can come out of the inner-city," said Sonia White, head of the Trench Town Peace and Justice Centre in the heart of the volatile west Kingston neighborhood that was the boyhood home of Reggae legend Bob Marley. "It's not all about guns in Trench Town. There are law abiding citizens who are victims of verbal and physical abuse by police. There are many times that I have to be the eulogist at several needless funerals," White said. The head of the Fletcher's Land Parenting Association, Arlene Bailey, said measures must be instituted to protect citizens, who have learned not to wait on politicians to fix their problems. "For example, we impose a 9 o'clock curfew at night, when we take our children off the streets for their own protection," Bailey said. (Editing by Jane Sutton and Vicki Allen)
