This madness must end

Nov 27, 2012 Editorial

Guyana has never escaped the influence of other countries for as long as it has existed. Regardless of where we have come from we now speak the language of the colonial masters, albeit forced to do so; our education system is patterned after the British; we wear European clothes and we drive the cars that appear to be fashioned for other countries.
Even the way we now build our homes have changed. No longer do we take into consideration the climatic conditions as the older homes demonstrate with their windows and jalousies. Some of the things we do cannot be helped because domination by the colonial masters so dictated. And indeed some of the things that we have copied have been for our own good.
Today, some ugly elements have crept into the society and we are left to wonder whether these, too, have been copied. One of the ugly elements is domestic violence to the point where it has gone beyond the physical assault. There is now the death or maiming of women.
On the International day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, a man knifed his paramour to death. And this killing came one day after a man climbed through the window of the home of a woman who had opted to call an end to their relationship because of abuse. Having climbed through the window the man proceeded to amputate one of the woman’s hands with a blow from a cutlass. He also killed the woman’s partner even as the man lay in the house.
And this trend has been on for some time now. The number of women killed by their partners has reached proportions that must certainly be higher than in many other countries. Guyana is surely taking its place on the world stage.
There are organizations that talk about violence. Only Sunday did this country observe International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. On that very day a man killed his partner. There were messages from the various organizations, including one from the Association of Women Lawyers. We must now ask, “Who is listening to these messages?”
Under such conditions it behooves the government to take a drastic step to curb this brutality. Mere talk is certainly not working.
There are those of us who still remember the alacrity with which the government moved to rid the country of the scourge of kicking down doors to rob people. It certainly did not take long because the gallows was put to use with telling effect.
Those who firmly believe that the gallows is not a deterrent were very silent because the truth was something else. Indeed there are the human rights advocates who condemn the ultimate sanction as barbaric. We are not hearing a peep from these people even as women drop like flies.
The government is saying that it must go to the people for their views on whether it should continue with the death penalty for certain crimes. We are certain that if the men who kill women are made to face the gallows then this rampant episode would come to an immediate halt.
It is sickening to read of women seeking protection from the courts to little or no avail. Even court orders for the attacker to keep his distance seem not to be working because the attacker knows that by the time the police respond he would be long gone, having executed his plan.
In the developed countries where there is either abolition or a moratorium on the death penalty men are certainly not killing women at the pace with which they do in Guyana. In addition, the police response is very quick and appropriate. The law acts condignly.
Those of us who have daughters know the fear of them being seriously hurt at the hands of their spouses. There are those among us who train our daughters to suffer their husbands. That is one aspect of our cultural development that we must change.
But above all, we parents should teach our sons to recognize the value of the woman. If we fail to do these things then more women would be among the statistics.