Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country's justice ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said the punishment hasn't been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island's penal code. It was administered with strokes from a tamarind-tree switch or a cat o'nine tails, a whip made of nine, knotted cords.

Justice Minister Mark Golding says the "degrading" punishment is an anachronism which violates Jamaica's international obligations and is preventing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's government from ratifying the United Nations convention against torture.

"The time has come to regularize this situation by getting these colonial-era laws off our books once and for all," Mr Golding said in a Thursday statement.