If you’re not on Cayman News Service’s mailing list for news flashes, you won’t have seen the link to a six-minute video on Youtube of Cuban refugees off West Bay dock. It shows a home-made boat packed with Cubans being refused food and water by uniformed policemen.

You can Google “Not Worth Water” to see the video. The boat is so flimsy and unstable you wonder how it could ever survive in open water; but I’m told there have been even worse ones given the same Cayman Islands welcome. Another Youtube video, by the same Caymanian photographer, is of an empty Cuban boat that washed ashore; there are no bodies in sight.

We all know that our “border security” shows no pity towards the Cubans, but it is shocking to actually watch its contempt for human life.

By way of contrast: our local papers and blogs are bewailing the recent killing of six iguanas, and calling it murder. But is that crime really in the same class as killing Cuban refugees? Are our society’s priorities really so screwed up that we rate the lives of iguanas above the lives of humans?

Dear God.

We as a community are shamed by this video evidence of our authorities’ sense of charity. Surely, surely, as a community we must persuade them to clean up their act. Our Police and Immigration officials are specially trained to carry out orders without question, so a clear order from above may be all that’s needed.

“Licence to kill”

Some among us don’t feel the shame. There are those who say, “Well, it’s too bad they have to be sent off to drown, but what else can we do? We can’t allow them all to stay here.” Hitler said, “It’s too bad we have to kill Jews, but what else can we do? We can’t allow them all to live among us.” The scale of suffering is hugely different, but I can’t discern much difference in the principle.

I’m not going to say that we as a community lack Christian charity, because in our local tradition Christian charity begins and ends at home. Traditionally, it isn’t extended to foreigners. Do we (as a community) really care whether they live or die? How many strangers’ lives are equal in value to one native iguana’s?

Nobody should be asking, “What else can we do?” There is plenty else we can do, as an alternative to deliberately endangering the lives of refugees.

For one thing, we could give them water, food, basic medical supplies, fuel and repairs. Caymanians of earlier generations would have done that. Yes, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) makes its Caymanian appointees sign Memorandums of Understanding with Cuba from time to time. And, yes, the FCO orders our Immigration and Police Officers to enforce the terms of the MOUs.

However, our Immigration and Police are also obliged by the British Government to enforce the terms of the International Convention on Refugees, too, and the general maritime law as well, and in practice they don’t enforce them. Since when does an informal “licence to kill” issued by a despotic Communist dictatorship out-rank international human-rights laws?

Pfffttt. The MOU is not enforceable and not binding. It is an illegal contract. Abiding by it is offensive to principled people. It would be nice if our rulers could be counted among them.

Faraway places

For another thing, we could issue Work Permits to some of the refugees and let them stay here and work for a living, under a tight short-term rollover rule. Why not? Cayman has some large construction projects coming up, and every single new job will require a new migrant to do it. (There is zero unemployment for Caymanians, except those who can’t or won’t work.)

Instead of recruiting people from faraway places like China and India, why not turn to our nearest neighbour?

With Work Permits, the Cuban workers wouldn’t be refugees, or be eligible to apply for asylum. They might be eligible again when their rollover terms are up, but see above. The FCO and its controlled local agencies don’t observe international law at the best of times; one more breach won’t faze them.

Meanwhile, our Police and Immigration Officers need to be aware (and their families and friends need to remind them) that they are human beings first and mindless serfs a distant second. As humans, their primary duty is to international human-rights law, way ahead of the duty to obey any local order to put human lives in danger. Ahead of any illegal contract with Cuba, too.

After they have watched the “Not Worth Water” video, they should all go to Wikipedia and type the words “Nuremberg Defence”. On that page, they can read how the German soldiers and their Nazi commanders sixty years ago used “just following orders” as their catch-all excuse for acting outside the norms of civilised behaviour.

In current news reports they can read how, today, American and British serfs and commanders use the same defence to excuse their cruelties against vulnerable foreigners in their increasingly infamous War of Terror. Their cruelties put them in the same category as Germany’s serfs and commanders of two generations ago. It’s a scary thought, that Cayman’s uniforms may be taking such people as role models.

First they came for the Cubans. But I wasn’t a Cuban, so I didn’t protest. Next, they came for... [and so on].