KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though the gov­ern­ment says it is tak­ing steps to­ward pro­tect­ing vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, women's ad­vo­ca­cy groups are call­ing for a greater ef­fort to save women whose lives are un­der threat by vi­o­lent men.
Wom­antra di­rec­tor Stephanie Leitch said po­lice are man­dat­ed to re­spond to all dis­tress calls. Leitch said the claim that Resh­ma Kan­chan's fam­i­ly made mul­ti­ple calls to the po­lice that went unan­swered is high­ly con­cern­ing. Leitch said that in a sim­i­lar­ly up­set­ting in­ci­dent a few weeks ago, po­lice re­spond­ed to a neigh­bour's call about a do­mes­tic dis­pute but de­cid­ed not to en­ter the res­i­dence when they ar­rived. The woman who lived in that house was found dead days lat­er in a cesspit. She said this was un­ac­cept­able. 
"Spe­cial­ly trained of­fi­cers of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit are lo­cat­ed in nine po­lice sta­tions through­out the coun­try, and Pe­nal is not one of them, but this does not ex­cuse the non-re­spon­sive­ness of of­fi­cers. If any woman or vic­tim would like to make a re­port of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, any of­fi­cer is em­pow­ered to take an ini­tial re­port and pass it on­to the near­est GBV Unit. In the South­ern dis­trict, this would in­clude Mon Re­pos, LaBrea and Point Fortin. 
"I am hope­ful that ACP Claire Guy-Al­leyne and Shireen Pol­lard, Man­ag­er of the GBV Unit will con­duct their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pur­sue the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to hold the of­fi­cers sta­tioned at Pe­nal ac­count­able. Ac­count­abil­i­ty must be at the cen­tre of polic­ing, es­pe­cial­ly when there is a loss of life that could have been pre­vent­ed," Leitch said.
She said Resh­ma was the most re­cent vic­tim of femi­cide but joins 18 oth­er women for 2020. She wants all stake­hold­ers in­ter­est­ed in end­ing gen­der-based vi­o­lence to col­lab­o­rate in a State-led ef­fort to en­sure that no one falls through the cracks. 
"This is an ur­gent call to do so. The up­com­ing bud­get must be gen­der-in­formed, tak­ing in­to ac­count the spe­cif­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of women and girls to vi­o­lence dur­ing COVID-19 and al­lo­cate suf­fi­cient funds for com­mu­ni­ty in­ter­ven­tions, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly me­di­a­tion and psy­choso­cial sup­port. It is not enough to sim­ply re­act to the mur­der of women, we have to do more to pre­vent it. "
Not­ing the Kan­chans' claims of po­lice in­ac­tion were sim­i­lar to those made by the fam­i­lies of oth­er do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mur­der vic­tims, the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV) re­peat­ed its call for a com­pre­hen­sive mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to do­mes­tic mur­ders.
“What were her cir­cum­stances and those of the per­pe­tra­tor? What do we know about the per­pe­tra­tor? Did Resh­ma have fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port? Did the per­pe­tra­tor have fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port? Had mul­ti­ple re­ports been made to the po­lice as claimed by her moth­er, Davi­ca Kan­chan in tele­vi­sion in­ter­views?
“If re­ports were made in re­la­tion to do­mes­tic abuse against Resh­ma, what was the po­lice re­sponse? Was an ap­pli­ca­tion for a pro­tec­tion or­der con­sid­ered? Did her com­mu­ni­ty know that she was a vic­tim of abuse? What ac­tions were tak­en if any, to pro­tect Resh­ma by those around her? 
CADV be­lieves this ap­proach will con­tribute to strength­en­ing the cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty of all to do more, to speak up, stand up and act to pro­tect and pre­vent do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.
The Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice (CC­SJ) is call­ing all cit­i­zens to re­spond ur­gent­ly to the preva­lence of vi­o­lence against women and girls in T&T.  
Leela Ramdeen, Chair of CC­SJ, said leg­is­la­tion is not suf­fi­cient and too of­ten fam­i­ly mem­bers, neigh­bours, friends and co-work­ers know or sus­pect abuse and do noth­ing about the sit­u­a­tion. Ramdeen said there are many av­enues open for cit­i­zens to act. She said every­one heard sto­ries of peo­ple vis­it­ing po­lice sta­tions in their dis­tricts, on­ly to be ig­nored. While the TTPS es­tab­lished a Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit, whose ju­ris­dic­tion goes be­yond lo­cal po­lice sta­tions, she called of them to step out of their com­fort zones and as­sist women to es­cape im­mi­nent death. 
“This heinous form of op­pres­sion/gen­der-based vi­o­lence is an af­front to the in­her­ent dig­ni­ty of each woman/girl and di­min­ish­es/de­hu­man­is­es all of us. If we analyse these crimes, we will see that preda­to­ry vi­o­lence in­volved planned acts.  We all know the sta­tis­tics, that glob­al­ly, about one out of every three women have ex­pe­ri­enced vi­o­lence in their life­time. We need to move be­yond sta­tis­tics to take ac­tion at var­i­ous lev­els in our so­ci­ety to put an end to this crime. We must step up and be our sis­ters’ and broth­ers’ keep­ers – yes, broth­ers, as per­pe­tra­tors ap­pear to have been so­cialised to re­spond to re­jec­tion in a cer­tain way. We must re-so­cialise both sex­es, ad­dress the un­equal pow­er re­la­tions be­tween and women, and play our part in build­ing a cul­ture of life, love, and mu­tu­al re­spect: from an ear­ly age. At­ti­tu­di­nal and be­hav­iour­al changes won’t hap­pen by vaps. We have se­ri­ous work to do. For ex­am­ple, we must ad­dress the need for val­ues/con­science for­ma­tion and cit­i­zen­ship pro­grammes – at home, in our ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, in our faith com­mu­ni­ties, in our work­places etc,” Ramdeen said. 
She ac­knowl­edged that some per­pe­tra­tors are suf­fer­ing from se­vere men­tal ill­ness­es and may be dan­ger­ous. There­fore, she urged peo­ple to be cau­tious when deal­ing with these sit­u­a­tions and to call on the au­thor­i­ties, but take ac­tion.