An­na-Lisa Paul

Ten­sions ran high yes­ter­day, as hu­man rights ac­tivists and con­cerned cit­i­zens con­verged on Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, to pub­licly demon­strate their sup­port for the call to re­move Port-of-Spain May­or Ray­mond Tim Kee over his com­ment on the death of Japan­ese mu­si­cian Asa­mi Na­gakiya.

How­ev­er, they were forced to ac­knowl­edge the pres­ence of ac­tivists Juli­et Davies and Mel­ba Box­ill, who en­sured their voic­es were al­so heard, as they ac­cused the me­dia of mis­rep­re­sent­ing Tim Kee's com­ments.

The lunchtime protest, which was first an­nounced via so­cial me­dia, at­tract­ed a wide range of peo­ple from across so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore, na­tion­al award re­cip­i­ent Du-Marouis Hors­ley, at­tor­neys, busi­ness own­ers, civ­il ser­vants, vis­it­ing Japan­ese me­dia and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er for­eign news agen­cies.

Al­though women were urged to don their Car­ni­val cos­tumes and at­tend the peace­ful protest, on­ly a hand­ful of them heed­ed this call from the group led by An­gelique Nixon and Ati­lah Springer.

Ob­serv­ing a minute of si­lence pri­or to ad­dress­ing the crowd gath­ered at the band­stand, a teary-eyed Springer stressed that the event had been or­gan­ised on be­half of not just Na­gakiya but all the vic­tims who had lost their lives through an act of vi­o­lence.

The call for Tim Kee's re­moval fol­lowed a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, when he made state­ments al­lud­ing to the dress and con­duct of women at Car­ni­val time as he spoke about the death of Na­gakiya, whose life­less body was found clad in a cos­tume and buried un­der some leaves un­der a tree at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Re­fer­ring to Tim Kee's com­ments as "vic­tim sham­ing", Springer said there was an im­me­di­ate need for lo­cal and re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties to work to­geth­er to erase the cul­ture of in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty that con­tin­ues to per­vade all lev­els of so­ci­ety.She said the time had come for gen­der sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing to be in­tro­duced in­to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, po­lice and pub­lic ser­vice.

Springer said every­one, es­pe­cial­ly women, need­ed to learn "that licks is not ac­cept­able." She said this was a rem­nant left over from the days of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship, and it was time to en­sure that men and boys were taught not to rape or abuse women.Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed by An­gelique Nixon, who urged the Gov­ern­ment to lis­ten to the peo­ple and act on their re­quest to re­move Tim Kee from of­fice.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley weighed in on the mat­ter on Thurs­day, when he an­nounced that the may­or's con­tro­ver­sial com­ments did not war­rant his dis­missal.

But Nixon in­vit­ed those present to "re­sist the way in which the may­or of Port-of-Spain has cho­sen to deal with this is­sue".Min­utes af­ter a four-para­graph let­ter con­demn­ing the prac­tice of vic­tim sham­ing and de­mand­ing Tim Kee's re­moval was read out to the gath­er­ing, a hand­ful of se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials es­cort­ed Springer, Nixon and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple to the may­or's City Hall of­fice where it was hand­ed over to the may­or's sec­re­tary.

Un­der the watch­ful eyes of the dozens of po­lice of­fi­cers who were post­ed through­out the square and at the front of City Hall, the pro­test­ers were al­lowed to walk along the pave­ment whilst hold­ing aloft the plac­ards and signs con­vey­ing their dis­gust and dis­sat­is­fac­tion over Tim Kee's state­ments. Over in the Unit­ed King­dom, Trinida­di­an na­tion­als held a sim­i­lar protest out­side the T&T High Com­mis­sion in Britain.

They too de­liv­ered a let­ter in which they knocked Tim Kee over his state­ment and called for his re­moval.Al­so present yes­ter­day in a fig­ure-hug­ging white dress was for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore, who al­so con­demned the may­or's com­ments as she said, "It is not the job of any man and cer­tain­ly not the may­or to po­lice women's bod­ies. That is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able."

Say­ing that she had care­ful­ly se­lect­ed her out­fit so as to en­sure it would not end with her be­ing abused or raped, Moore de­scribed Tim Kee as a "fright­en­ing man." She went fur­ther to say that it could be con­strued from his state­ments that al­co­hol and mu­sic were a dan­ger­ous mix for women on­ly–and in that in­stance, he, be­ing a pub­lic of­fi­cial elect­ed to serve the peo­ple, had ne­glect­ed to say how he would pro­tect women from such risks.

Asked if she thought the rein­tro­duc­tion of a min­istry of gen­der could as­sist in erad­i­cat­ing any such fu­ture in­ci­dents that drew the pub­lic's ire, Moore agreed it was a "fan­tas­tic idea."

How­ev­er, she added, "The en­tire Gov­ern­ment needs a gen­der pol­i­cy."Sev­er­al of the Japan­ese me­dia present yes­ter­day re­vealed that they had on­ly ar­rived in the coun­try on Thurs­day night, as they sought to piece to­geth­er the last hours of Na­gakiya's life.

One cam­era­man said: "Her death has been a kind of a big im­pact be­cause she loved here (Trinidad)."He ex­plained that in her home town of Sap­poro, which is on the north­ern Japan­ese is­land of Hokkai­do, Na­gakiya's death was "a very sad thing."