Two young men or­gan­ised a protest at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day as the coun­try con­tin­ued to re­act to the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of An­drea Bharatt.

Af­ter her body was found on Thurs­day, cit­i­zens from all across the coun­try have been find­ing ways to ho­n­our her lega­cy as well as press for change in the way women are treat­ed and laws to pre­vent more women from suf­fer­ing a sim­i­lar.

On San­day nu­mer­ous ral­lies, protests and mo­tor­cades were held.

Sev­er­al hun­dred pro­test­ers who gath­ered at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day called for the le­gal­i­sa­tion of non-lethal weapons for women as well as stricter leg­is­la­tion for rapists and kid­nap­pers.

The pro­test­ers be­gan gath­er­ing from 3 pm, armed with plac­ards to reg­is­ter their dis­con­tent with the treat­ment of women and girls in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Some of the plac­ards said, “Our rights are not up for grabs. Nei­ther are we,” “Fed up with me­dia con­fer­ences, do your job!” “Pull up on yuh bedrin who track­ing school girls”, “Stop pro­tect­ing rapists” and “Stop tell women how to dress, start teach­ing men not to rape” among oth­ers.

The protest was or­ga­nized by two young men, Ish­mael Tarou­ba and Dim­itri Chote.

Chote told Guardian Me­dia that young peo­ple were fed up of the cur­rent state of af­fairs.

“Where this na­tion is head­ed, it is not ac­cept­able the way that things are, we felt the loss of An­drea but it has been ac­cu­mu­lat­ing and we de­cid­ed to stop post­ing on so­cial me­dia and ac­tu­al­ly come out and ex­press our frus­tra­tion with the sit­u­a­tion,” Chote said.

Their aim was to not on­ly to reg­is­ter their dis­con­tent but to call for leg­isla­tive change.

“We would like leg­is­la­tion for the le­gal­iza­tion of non-lethal (weapons), we would like the sex of­fend­ers reg­istry to be made pub­lic, we would al­so like the reg­u­lar­iza­tion of the PH taxis, so peo­ple can feel safe while trav­el­ling.”

Chote said the next step for his group is to lob­by for their Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to make these changes hap­pen.

“The next step is to write let­ters to the MPs, the AG, we are not go­ing to stop be­cause every time some­thing like this hap­pens, we just have some­thing like this and it dies down, we need to con­tin­ue with the mo­men­tum and ac­tu­al­ly bring for­ward change,” he said.

Chote had this mes­sage for politi­cians, both in Gov­ern­ment and in Op­po­si­tion: “First and fore­most, you are ser­vants of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, you need to do what the peo­ple want and what will make the coun­try safer, this is for both sides of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.”

One woman, who brought her chil­dren along with her to the protest, said she be­lieves the time has come for the cit­i­zen­ry to force the change that is nec­es­sary.

“The time has come for us to make a dif­fer­ence in our so­ci­ety, we are women, we have daugh­ters and it is sim­ply not safe for us any­more. I think we need to pay at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing to women, you sim­ply can­not jump in­to a taxi and reach home, you are dis­ap­pear­ing, you are be­ing raped, robbed, it is ridicu­lous,” she said.

An­oth­er of the pro­tes­tors, who gave his name on­ly as Dami­an, said he wants all lead­ers in the coun­try to sit up and take ac­tion.

“I re­al­ly hope that all stake­hold­ers- whether it is the Gov­ern­ment, the Op­po­si­tion, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice- every­one needs to come to­geth­er and find a so­lu­tion to what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try,” he said.