Derek Achong

More than three dozen peo­ple gath­ered out­side the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day night to pay trib­ute to Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal on the one-year an­niver­sary of her bru­tal mur­der.

While the ma­jor­i­ty of the mod­est crowd were mem­bers of var­i­ous so­cial ac­tivist groups with whom See­ta­hal in­ter­act­ed dur­ing her ca­reer, a few could trace their first in­ter­ac­tion with the for­mer State pros­e­cu­tor to when they had found them­selves on the wrong side of the law in the past.

Many rem­i­nisced on their ex­pe­ri­ences with See­ta­hal, some choos­ing to crit­i­cise act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams for ap­par­ent de­lays in com­plet­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her mur­der.

Or­gan­is­er of the can­dle­light vig­il, Gillian Wall, co-founder of the Pow­er­ful Ladies of T&T (Plott), did not place all the blame on the po­lice as she said cit­i­zens need­ed to band to­geth­er with them (po­lice) in or­der to solve the crime and oth­ers like it.

"We have to unite to­geth­er as a peo­ple and take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for where we are head­ing. The ac­com­plices of this crime in­clude you and me if to­geth­er we do not bring these par­ties to jus­tice," Wall said.

Clear­ly dis­ap­point­ed by the poor turnout, Wall not­ed that there had been al­so been poor at­ten­dance at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice in Tu­na­puna or­gan­ised by See­ta­hal fam­i­ly the pre­vi­ous night.

"One year ago at Dana's fu­ner­al the crowds packed the church, stretched out pass the dri­ve­way and spilled out un­to the road. That was not the case last night at the memo­r­i­al ser­vice where the crowd bare­ly filled half the church. As a so­ci­ety, we for­get too quick­ly," Wall said.

She al­so sought to re­ject crit­i­cism from oth­er NGOs who she said claimed that her group was fo­cused on See­ta­hal's mur­der at the ex­pense of thou­sands of oth­er vic­tims whose crime have al­so gone un­solved.

"We are not just call­ing on jus­tice for Dana, we are do­ing so be­cause we all re­quire jus­tice. We (Plott) are ac­tive­ly plot­ting for T&T and try­ing to ad­dress the sin­is­ter and deeply dis­gust­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments that con­tin­ue to un­rav­el if not com­plete­ly de­stroy the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety," Wall said.

In his poignant trib­ute to See­ta­hal, Wayne Chance of pris­on­er re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion group Vi­sion on a Mis­sion, praised her for her sup­port of his or­gan­i­sa­tion in its for­ma­tive years.

"When­ev­er we need­ed le­gal ad­vice and sup­port she was al­ways ready. It is on­ly fit­ting that we stand in this call for jus­tice for her be­cause we be­lieve the sit­u­a­tion is very un­for­tu­nate," Chance said.

Oth­er at­ten­dees in­clud­ed for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Mary King and Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah, both of whom opt­ed to join in silent sol­i­dar­i­ty with the oth­er ad­vo­cates.

A hand­ful of See­ta­hal's rel­a­tives in­clud­ing her sis­ter Su­san Fran­cois, head of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU), at­tend­ed and thanked those present for their con­tin­ued sup­port.