Akash Sama­roo

Re­port­ing from UN­GA,

New York

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says she is notic­ing a wor­ry­ing spike in vi­o­lence against women and girls.

And she is chal­leng­ing the Gov­ern­ment on the crime-fight­ing so­lu­tion it promised dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign and rais­ing con­cerns over the ef­fi­ca­cy of the State of Emer­gency.

Her con­cern comes fol­low­ing the mur­der of 12-year-old Mari­ah Seenath.

A Form Three stu­dent at San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary School, Seenath was found dead by a res­i­dent around 12.50 pm on Sat­ur­day, about five feet in the bush­es off a track near the recre­ation ground in her neigh­bour­hood at Friend­ship Vil­lage, Ste Madeleine.

An au­top­sy re­vealed she was beat­en to death.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia while at­tend­ing a side event dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) in New York yes­ter­day, the Op­po­si­tion Leader said the child’s death res­onat­ed with her, as she too grew up not far from where Seenath lived.

“You know, this was in Friend­ship Vil­lage, right? And I’m orig­i­nal­ly from South, I’m orig­i­nal­ly from that area. So I kind of knew the area very well, you know, and you talk about a young girl who would have dreamed to be what­ev­er she want­ed to be. And, you know, when you’re a vic­tim in that sense, and you may not have even known, you may not have had a clue that this per­son is af­ter you,” Beck­les lament­ed.

Beck­les called for more sen­si­tiv­i­ty as it per­tains to is­sues re­lat­ing to chil­dren.

“Be­cause it’s not on­ly her, we have seen over the last cou­ple of months, an in­crease in vi­o­lence against both women and chil­dren. And as a so­ci­ety, we have to re­flect on, you know, when our women and chil­dren have been im­pact­ed in that way, what does it say about a Trinidad and To­ba­go?”

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has gone on record say­ing that there are some killings that can­not be pre­vent­ed dur­ing a SoE, a state­ment that has drawn mixed re­ac­tions.

Beck­les, how­ev­er, said this was the same Gov­ern­ment that said the SoE would have been a so­lu­tion to crime.

“Well, I mean, you would re­call that that is one of the things that the Gov­ern­ment tar­get­ed the Op­po­si­tion about, the is­sue of crime, and re­al­ly giv­ing the coun­try the im­pres­sion that if you have a state of emer­gency, you will have this re­duc­tion.

“Now, we are see­ing over the last month, in par­tic­u­lar, you have had sev­er­al mur­ders. So, I think the pop­u­la­tion would have had an ex­pec­ta­tion that with a state of emer­gency, you would have a sub­stan­tial de­crease, and cer­tain­ly that greater ef­forts would be made to pro­tect women and chil­dren,” Beck­les lament­ed.

The mur­der toll stood at 269 yes­ter­day, com­pared to 467 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.