Charles Kong Soo

A group of nurs­ing moth­ers staged a breast­feed­ing protest in front the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, af­ter two moth­ers were pre­vent­ed from breast­feed­ing their ba­bies dur­ing a chil­dren's play in the acad­e­my's au­di­to­ri­um.The protest was or­gan­ised by The In­for­ma­tive Breast­feed­ing Ser­vice (Tibs) to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the two women and to protest Na­pa's pol­i­cy on be­ing a breast­feed­ing ex­clu­sion zone.

An­to­nia Sealy was pre­vent­ed from breast­feed­ing her 12-month-old son Gio­van­ni dur­ing the play Phan­tom of the Na­pa at Na­pa, last Sun­day, when she was told by a male ush­er that no bev­er­ages were al­lowed in the au­di­to­ri­um.Dix­ie-Ann Bap­tiste-Knight said the same male ush­er pre­vent­ed her from breast­feed­ing her three-month-old son Caiden al­so dur­ing the play, telling her breast­feed­ing ba­bies threw up on the seats and car­ried com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

Tibs ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Rose­mary Ana­tol said, "This gath­er­ing is in sup­port of breast­feed­ing moth­ers to cre­ate aware­ness about the im­por­tance of breast­feed­ing, and it's al­so a protest against Na­pa's pol­i­cy to not al­low breast­feed­ing moth­ers in the au­di­to­ri­um and we hope that it will change."We're very con­cerned about the com­ments that were made by the ush­er such as ba­bies spread com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and that ba­bies spit up on the seats.

"It was re­al­ly very crass...it cer­tain­ly is not sup­port­ive of breast­feed­ing and this is a pub­lic space where moth­ers and fam­i­lies come."If we want to im­prove the health of the na­tion and be in line with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards like the US, UK and oth­er coun­tries, you can­not dis­crim­i­nate against women who are breast­feed­ing, which is what they are do­ing here."

Shee­tal Daswani, 37 weeks preg­nant with her sec­ond child, said to pre­vent a moth­er from breast­feed­ing while watch­ing a show and not dis­turb­ing any­one around her was a de­nial of her hu­man rights.Daswani said shunt­ing the women to a VIP room was even more of an in­sult be­cause no­body has prob­lems with breasts in this coun­try dur­ing Car­ni­val, and ap­par­ent­ly it was an is­sue and a case of dou­ble stan­dards and didn't make sense.

Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein, lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said women should not be forced to make choic­es that will make them feel iso­lat­ed, dis­em­pow­ered or un­com­fort­able.