Hugh Shearer October 1968 when his government banned the historian, Walter Rodney from re-entering the country. On 16 October a series of riots, known as the Rodney Riots broke out, after peaceful protest by students from the University of the West Indies campus at Mona, was suppressed by police; rioting spreading throughout Kingston. Shearer stood by the ban claiming that Rodney was a danger to Jamaica, citing his socialist ties, trips to Cuba and the USSR, as well as his radical Black nationalism. Shearer was generally uncomfortable with notions of pan-Africanism or militant black nationalism. He was also insecure about the stability
1988 October Riots and torture of detainees has been reported at the police academy. The state of emergency was decreed on October 6th and a curfew established that ran from midnight to six o'clock in the morning (starting on October the 8th the curfew was not enforced until 8 o'clock at night). Police were taunted as "Jews" by the demonstrators (a comment on the intifada in Israel). In general the riots were directed at the increasing social despair – to a large extent the result of oil prices dropping sharply the preceding years – and at the slow pace of economic and political