Silence is violence. Silence perpetuates violence and normalizes it. Like many, the news of the death of Andrea Bharatt in neighbouring Trinidad shook me. Her story is just a single drop in an ocean of violence that seems to always be at high tide and unfortunately it is something that is not uncommon even in our beloved Guyana.
I can recall the brutal deaths of 19-year-old Monica Reece in 1993, Kescia Branche in 2017 and just last December, Caroline Kennedy and her two young children who met their death while asleep in their home when an angry husband lit it on fire. I often ask myself how things arrive at death’s door without us seeing any of the signs. Why is it that things have to get this brutal before we recognize something is really wrong with the violence meted out to women for it to only happen again and again?