Persecution of Rastafari

Persecution of members of the Rastafari movement, an Abrahamic religion founded in Jamaica in the early 1930s among Afro-Jamaican communities, has been fairly continuous since the movement began but nowadays is particularly concerning their spiritual use of cannabis.

Part of a series on
Discrimination
General forms Age Class (Caste) Physical Disability Education Economic Employment Genetics Hair texture Height Housing Language Looks Race / Ethnicity / Nationality Rank Religion Sanity Sex Sexual orientation Size Skin color
Social Acephobia Adultism Amatonormativity Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-homelessness Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Antisemitism (Judeophobia) Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Clannism Cronyism Drug use Elitism Ephebiphobia Fatism Gerontophobia Heteronormativity Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Reverse Sectarianism Supremacism Black White Transphobia Non-binary Transmisogyny Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Ahmadiyya Atheism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Catholicism Christianity post–Cold War era Druze Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Islam Persecution Jehovah's Witnesses Judaism Persecution LDS or Mormon Neopaganism Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Copts Protestantism Rastafarianism Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national African Albanian American Arab Armenian Australian Austrian Azerbaijani British Canadian Catalan Chechen Chilean Chinese Croat Dutch English Estonian European Filipino Finnish French Georgian German Greek Haitian Hazara Hispanic Hungarian Igbo Indian Indonesian Iranian Irish Israeli Italian Japanese Jewish Khmer Korean Kurdish Malay Manchu Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Montenegrin Pakistani Pashtun Polish Portuguese Quebec Romani Romanian Russian Scottish Serb Slavic Somali Soviet Tatar Thai Tibetan Turkish Ukrainian Venezuelan Vietnamese Western
Manifestations Blood libel Bullying Compulsory sterilization Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog-whistle politics Eliminationism Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Hate crime Hate group Hate speech online Homeless dumping Indian rolling Lavender scare LGBT hate crimes Lynching Mortgage Murder music Occupational segregation Persecution Pogrom Purge Red Scare Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sex-selective abortion Slavery Slut-shaming Trans bashing Victimisation Violence against women White flight White power music Wife selling Witch-hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Blood purity Blood quantum Crime of apartheid Disabilities Catholic Jewish Ethnocracy Ethnopluralism Gender pay gap Gender roles Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Jim Crow laws Law for Protection of the Nation McCarthyism MSM blood donation restrictions Nonpersons Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) Nuremberg Laws One-drop rule Racial quota Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Sodomy law State atheism State religion Ugly law Voter suppression
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity training Empowerment Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex rights LGBT rights Masculism Multiculturalism Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Allophilia Anti-cultural, anti-national, and anti-ethnic terms Bias Christian privilege Civil liberties Cultural assimilation Dehumanization Diversity Ethnic penalty Eugenics Internalized oppression Intersectionality Male privilege Masculism Medical model of disability autism Multiculturalism Net bias Neurodiversity Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Prisoner abuse Racial bias in criminal news Racism by country Religious intolerance Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social exclusion Social model of disability Social stigma Stereotype threat The talk White privilege

The first Rastafari to appear in a court was Leonard Howell in Jamaica in 1934 who was charged with sedition for refusing to accept George V of the United Kingdom as his King, instead insisting that he was only loyal to Haile Selassie and the Ethiopian Empire. He was found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison.[1]

By the 1950s, Rastafari's message of pride and unity had unnerved the ruling class of Jamaica. In 1954, the Pinnacle commune was destroyed by Jamaican authorities.

In 1963, following a violent confrontation between Rastafarians and Jamaican police forces at a gas station, the Jamaican government issued the police and military an order to "bring in all Rastas, dead or alive," resulting in mass arrests, with many of those arrested tortured or killed in what would be known as the Coral Gardens incident.[2]

Attitudes began to change when Haile Selassie I visited Jamaica in April 1966.

According to many Rastas, the illegality of cannabis in many nations is evidence of persecution of Rastafari. They are not surprised that it is illegal, seeing it as a powerful substance that opens people's minds to the truth – something the Babylon system, they reason, clearly does not want.[3] They contrast it to alcohol and other drugs, which they feel destroy the mind.[4]

In 1998, Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno gave a legal opinion[5] that Rastafari do not have the religious right to smoke marijuana in violation of the United States' drug laws. The position is the same in the United Kingdom, where, in the Court of Appeal case of R v Taylor,[6] it was held that the UK's prohibition on cannabis use did not contravene the right to freedom of religion conferred under the European Convention on Human Rights.

On January 2, 1991, at an international airport in his homeland of Guam, Ras Iyah Ben Makahna (Benny Guerrero) was arrested for possession and importation of marijuana and seeds. He was charged with importation of a controlled substance. The case was heard by the US 9th Circuit Court November 2001, and in May 2002 the court had decided that the practice of Rastafari sanctions the smoking of marijuana, but nowhere does the religion sanction the importation of marijuana. Guerrero's lawyer Graham Boyd pointed out that the court's ruling was "equivalent to saying wine is a necessary sacrament for some Christians but you have to grow your own grapes."[7]

In July 2008, however, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that Rastafari may be allowed to possess greater amounts of cannabis legally, owing to its use by them as a sacrament.[8]

In 2009, Rasta Doug Darrell was arrested after a National Guard helicopter flying over his New Hampshire home found he was growing 15 marijuana plants in his backyard. In a subsequent trial in September 2012, Darrell was found "not guilty" by twelve jurors exercising the right of jury nullification.[9]

Sacramental use of Cannabis in celebration of the Rastafari faith became legal in Jamaica on April 15, 2015.