GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Ter­ri­ble and fright­en­ing. This is how child and hu­man rights ac­tivist Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att has de­scribed the re­cent in­ci­dents in which chil­dren are in­creas­ing­ly be­com­ing col­lat­er­al dam­age–ei­ther shot dead or wound­ed by gun­men–as the coun­try’s crime surge con­tin­ues.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ma­habir-Wy­att seemed to be lost for words as she be­moaned the trag­ic fate which re­cent­ly snuffed out in­no­cent lives and she con­demned the law­less­ness cur­rent­ly sweep­ing the land.

Ma­habir-Wy­att said not on­ly were chil­dren un­der siege, but the whole so­ci­ety seemed to be un­der at­tack from crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“It is ter­ri­ble and it is de­stroy­ing peo­ple’s lives. Not just the ones who get shot or the fam­i­lies of those who are killed, but chil­dren gen­er­al­ly are not be­ing al­lowed the free­dom to go out and ex­plore by them­selves.

“Peo­ple are fright­ened. They are even fright­ened to go out and shop. I find it very fright­en­ing most­ly be­cause it af­fects the abil­i­ty of chil­dren to grow up and learn to be in­de­pen­dent,” Ma­habir-Wy­att said.

The for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor not­ed that the “whole of cul­ture has changed”, as par­ents now have to know where their chil­dren are at all times.

Ma­habir-Wy­att al­so de­scribed as “ab­solute hor­ror” the killing of Ezekiel Paria, 12, a pupil of East­ern Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

“It doesn’t mat­ter if it was an ac­ci­dent or just some­body do­ing a dri­ve-by shoot­ing. The dri­ve-by shoot­ings are some­times just done not as an ac­ci­dent but to prove that you can do it, and if you be­long to a gang that re­quires you to do that for you to be part of a gang, then that’s what it is.

“They don’t have to know who you are. They don’t have to be aim­ing at you. They can just be do­ing it as an en­trance in­to a gang,” Ma­habir-Wy­att said, as she em­pha­sised that dri­ve-by shoot­ings are al­so now in­clud­ing chil­dren.

Yes­ter­day, a four-year-old boy was grazed by a bul­let af­ter a gun­man opened fire in Pe­tit Val­ley.

In the past, Ma­habir-Wy­att said, chil­dren “would have been avoid­ed” in this vi­o­lence.

“I don’t think it’s a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to ex­ter­mi­nate chil­dren. I think peo­ple have stopped car­ing who they hit,” Ma­habir-Wy­att added.

Asked what this says about the present state of so­ci­ety, Ma­habir-Wy­att said: “You are right to ask that ques­tion, and I hope you keep on ask­ing that be­cause I don’t know.”

On what can so­ci­ety do to help keep chil­dren safe, Ma­habir-Wy­att al­so replied that she did not know.

She not­ed, how­ev­er, that some of the mea­sures tak­en to keep chil­dren from harm were worse.

“You can’t keep chil­dren locked up in­side the house un­der quar­an­tine. You can’t keep chil­dren in quar­an­tine un­til they are 19 or 20. It is just not pos­si­ble,” Ma­habir-Wy­att added.

CoP: No com­ment

Asked to com­ment on the at­tacks on chil­dren in the coun­try, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who was at­tend­ing the Chi­nese Spring Fes­ti­val Tem­ple Fair at the An­chor­age, Ch­aguara­mas, yes­ter­day, said she was there as a guest and did not want to com­ment on the mat­ter.