Troops Killed In Fight With Jamaican Sect

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29238, 23 June 1960, Page 15

Troops Killed In Fight With Jamaican Sect

KINGSTON (Jamaica), June 22.

Two men of the Royal Hampshire Regiment were killed and two others were critically wounded during a raid on a camp of bearded, fanatical Rastafarians in the hills overlooking Kingston, Jamaica.

One of the men died at the scene of the clash yesterday and the other died later in a military hospital.

Troops and police with police dogs, helped with a spotter plane, have cordoned off the area where the Rastafarians—a marijuanasmoking sect employing violence to back its campaign for local negroes to go back to Africa—are believed to have hidden.

The clash took place when men of the Royal Hampshires, recently arrived in Jamaica, joined men of the West India Regiment and police in a raid on the Rastafarian camp. The camp was found to be deserted, but dynamite, crude bombs and other weapons—including cutlasses—were discovered. The Rastafarians tried to ambush the security forces. Five Rastafarians escaped and commandeered a van at gunpoint. They shot their way through police cordons and escaped into the hills of Sligoville, 20 miles away by road from the scene of the clash.

Armed guards have been strengthened on the homes of the Jamacian Premier (Mr Norman Manley) and of other Ministers. It is believed that the Rastafarians have been hoarding weapons preparatory to a rising against the Government.

The Rev. Claudius Henry, aged 57, founder and leader of the African Reform Church, and 15 of his Rastafarian followers are being held on charges of treason and felony. Mr Henry set up the sect about two years ago, calling it the African Reformed Church. He went to Addis Ababa in October. 1959, and announced on his return that Ethiopia would welcome negroes from Jamaica.

Hundreds of sect members, who wear beards and long matted hair, and believe the use of marijuana is ordained by the Bible, gathered in Kingston later that month to go to Ethiopia, but where dispersed in dissillusionment when Mr Henry told them “the time is not yet ripe.” The sect has had several clashes with police.