Gail Alexan­der

While Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ue de­bat­ing the Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Bill on Fri­day, some groups will to­day con­tin­ue demon­stra­tions call­ing for more leg­is­la­tion to halt vi­o­lence against women and cit­i­zens gen­er­al­ly.

A demon­stra­tion against vi­o­lence to­wards women will be held at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah from 3.30 pm. A spokesper­son for the or­gan­is­ers Demitri Chote said it will be a peace­ful protest and ral­ly, not a po­lit­i­cal event. It is be­ing staged by a group of young peo­ple for­mer­ly from Hillview Col­lege (Class of 2017).

Speak­ers have not yet been fi­nalised.

“We’re call­ing for women to be al­lowed to use non-lethal weapons—tasers, pep­per spray, etc—to pro­tect them­selves. We al­so would like to have the Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry made avail­able to the pub­lic and to be prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed,”

Last Thurs­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­alAl Rawi said com­plaints from civ­il so­ci­ety about the Reg­istry—that Gov­ern­ment was go­ing too far too fast—had halt­ed that process.

Join­ing the ral­ly lat­er to­day will be a group who are stag­ing a mo­tor­cade in mem­o­ry of Bharatt and oth­er vic­tims of vi­o­lence.

A no­tice about the mo­tor­cade stat­ed it is to protest the “politi­ci­sa­tion of cit­i­zens’ safe­ty.” That group al­so stat­ed that the mo­tor­cade isn’t af­fil­i­at­ed with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty or NGO and is “sim­ply a group of con­cerned cit­i­zens.”

“Our de­mand is that bail be de­nied for rape charges and those charged with mul­ti­ple of­fences and that bail not be grant­ed to rapists and ca­reer crim­i­nals.”

Par­tic­i­pants will meet at the Barakah Grounds in Ch­agua­nas this morn­ing and head for the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Al­so ex­pect­ed to at­tend the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah ral­ly are mem­bers of the Wil­low Foun­da­tion and a child rights ad­vo­cate.

A source said Phillip Alexan­der of Cit­i­zens’ Union, who in De­cem­ber said he was throw­ing his weight be­hind UNC and join­ing the op­po­si­tion par­ty, may at­tend but won’t be among the speak­ers.

The Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Bill seeks to al­low elec­tron­ic forms of ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing CCTV cam­eras record­ings, to be ad­mit­ted as ev­i­dence in court and seeks to pro­tect wit­ness­es. Pro­vi­sions in­clude al­low­ing for vic­tims and wit­ness­es who may be afraid to face al­leged per­pe­tra­tors to give ev­i­dence on elec­tron­ic record­ings.

De­bate on the bill gen­er­at­ed in­tense heat in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, com­ing on the heels of the dis­cov­ery of the body of court clerk An­drea Bharatt. The 23-year-old Ari­ma woman was kid­napped on Jan­u­ary 29 af­ter she en­tered a taxi with false “H” li­cense plate in Ari­ma. Her body was found last Thurs­day down a precipice in the Aripo Heights.

The mur­der gen­er­at­ed an out­pour­ing of na­tion­al grief, in­clud­ing demon­stra­tions in Bar­rack­pore, out­side the Red House and oth­er parts of the coun­try. One dis­play shared on so­cial me­dia was an ef­fi­gy hung with a noose firm­ly from a Point Fortin over­pass. It bore a sign: “Pass the law—Hang them!”

Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion ref­er­enced Bharatt’s death dur­ing last Fri­day’s de­bate. Gov­ern­ment MPs called on the Op­po­si­tion to al­low the bill to im­prove the abil­i­ty to use ev­i­dence in the an­ti-crime and crim­i­nal jus­tice fight against “mon­sters” com­mit­ting crimes in T&T. They not­ed that as­pects of the bill which the UNC ob­ject­ed to had ac­tu­al­ly been ap­proved by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment in 2013.

UNC MPs cit­ed de­fi­cien­cies with the bill and said it wouldn’t pro­tect women. They said the Op­po­si­tion would sup­port bills where rights are up­held.

De­bate on the bill was sus­pend­ed un­til Fri­day.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi ex­plained: “We paused de­bate be­cause the Op­po­si­tion didn’t come up with any­thing that made sense. I’d like to give them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make sense. This pause is to give them a lit­tle space to do their work.

“This law is de­signed to stop mon­sters and my ques­tion to (UNC leader Kam­la) Per­sad-Bisses­sar is why she will not stop mon­sters in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

On its Face­book page, the UNC ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of in­com­pe­tence and of com­ing “un­pre­pared to fin­ish their own Bill. An abrupt ad­journ­ment halt­ed de­bate where the Op­po­si­tion high­light­ed that this leg­is­la­tion is not the so­lu­tion and the Gov­ern­ment came with noth­ing but pro­pa­gan­da.

“We’ll con­tin­ue to call for tar­get­ed so­lu­tions to is­sues af­fect­ing the peo­ple as we’ve al­ways done and not seek po­lit­i­cal mileage in every­thing as is what the Gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed. Gov­ern­ment must come pre­pared as they have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the en­tire na­tion to bring good law that will stand up against ju­di­cial scruti­ny and serve every­one just­ly.”

The par­ty is ex­pect­ed to speak more on the is­sue to­day.