(This is one of a series of weekly columns
from Guyanese in the diaspora and others
with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
Savitri Sabina Persaud was born in Georgetown and lived in Moblissa and Belle Vue, West Bank Demerara before immigrating to Canada with her mother in 1993 at the age of five. She is currently a fourth year student at the University of Toronto, completing a double major in Women and Gender Studies and Political Science.
By Savitri Sabina Persaud
On July 27th, Guyanese from all walks of life – irrespective of race, gender, class, age, education, and dis/ability – stopped and took a few moments to share their reflections in support of children’s rights and the Coalition To Stamp Out Sexual Violence Against Children. Their words, written on three-inch squares of colored cloth, are powerful, cathartic, and moving. They read: “Stop the abuse. We are humans.”; “Why can’t our children get justice?”; “Stop the violence. Children are our future.”; “Education: Parental Education Classes”; “Child sexual abuse is a crime.”; “Jail the offender.”; “No bail!”; and “Save our children!”. These are just some of the almost 200 responses that were collected in the span of a couple hours and pinned together to form a large patchwork in protest against violence against children and in the promotion of human rights. The response was so great that the organizers from Red Thread and Help and Shelter ran out of cloth on two occasions. This outpouring of support speaks volumes, as it is telling of people’s consciousness about the abusive situations that so many children confront. “No bail!” is a condemnation of what often occurs when those accused, especially when they wield wealth and esteem, are released on bail after being charged with sexually assaulting a child. As a courtroom observer of a pre-trial hearing surrounding the alleged sexual molestation of young boys, I witnessed how the accused businessman was allowed to walk nonchalantly in and out of the courtroom without a care in the world. It is astounding how an individual charged with heinous sex crimes is free to come and go as he pleases.
Where is the justice for so many children when money passes hands, victims and witnesses stop co-operating, and cases get dropped? When abused children and their families bravely seek justice, their lives are constantly disrupted by the emotional trauma of facing their abusers in court on a consistent basis, while simultaneously fighting a broken system that does not effectively enforce laws that have been recently enacted to protect them. It was not until I observed these courtroom proceedings that I realized how vital the Coalition To Stamp Out Sexual Violence Against Children is in ensuring that violent crimes against children become issues of national concern, not problems of ancillary importance.
The campaign on July 27th is not the only public intervention that the Coalition has been involved in. Every Thursday they hold a vigil outside the Office of the President, and will continue to do so until the legislation has been changed. Demonstrations like this – which Human Services and Social Security Minister Priya Manickchand had earlier deemed “strange” and “wholly uncalled for” because, she argued, the administration had demonstrated the will to change the laws and the legislation was at the time being drafted and reviewed – are, on the contrary, absolutely necessary in order to raise awareness about the situation regarding the sexual abuse of children and the too slow pace of ensuring not only the passage and proper implementation of legislation against it but of making it a priority on the agenda of the whole country. As the Coalition said, the vigil is to “warn all elements of the justice system (parliamentarians and members of the judiciary) that we are going to monitor their actions to ensure that they use the new legislation for the protection of our children far better than they have used what is available to them under the present legislation…” What is actually “strange” and “wholly uncalled for” are the acts of violence perpetrated against children every day in Guyana that go unpunished and are shamefully swept under the rug of respectability. Furthermore, it is “strange” that these crimes against our most innocent and vulnerable demographic are slowly normalizing and hardening in the Guyanese psyche. Manickchand’s “wholly uncalled for” statements prompt me to ask: when did our humanity get lost in the bureaucracy of the courts and the government? The weekly vigil does not take away from the fact that legislation (and the discussions around it which the Coalition has also participated in and supported) has been prepared. It is another kind of action that keeps it, and the children it is meant to protect, in public view and to remind us all of our civic responsibilities.
What became abundantly clear during this protest is that violence against children is not an issue that should and can be dealt with in a vacuum. It is an issue that is part of a much larger web of intersecting conflicts, whose matrix is connected to matters concerning violence against women, poverty, isolation, and public disenchantment. The act of allowing citizens to express themselves on a three-by-three piece of cloth unleashed a plethora of frustration. Women, children and men were given an avenue to speak and be heard and they seized it! One woman from West Bank stopped to not only contribute to the patchwork, but to also comment on her experiences of domestic violence against women in her community. She described how one woman was repeatedly beaten and hacked with her husband’s cutlass.
This woman also expressed how in her community, women who are victims of domestic abuse are often casualties of poverty as well. Another woman, eager to express her opinions about the sexual violence perpetrated against children, was being pulled and tugged along by her husband. When asked if she could quickly write down her message, she became hesitant and stopped talking. This woman, who was articulate and refused to shut up even while her partner jerked her arm, all of a sudden closed up completely. Another volunteer and I quickly realized that she was unable to read and write. She later returned without her husband and we asked her if she would allow us to write down her response as she expressed it again to us. She agreed and then signed the cloth. These two encounters only scratch the surface of the social issues that need to be tackled collectively in conjunction with violence against children.
On that particular day, citizens bypassed the fallacies of race, the hierarchies of class and gender, the barriers of poverty, illiteracy, and abuse as they united and supported the Coalition To Stamp Out Sexual Violence Against Children. This demonstration illustrates that Guyanese are able to come together and connect on a particular issue that is so intrinsic to our future because the children, like so many wrote, are our future.
