Femicide—The latest Guyanese scourge

Jun 09, 2018 Letters

Dear Editor,
Who will stem the tide in the rising femicide? In the absence of a visible concrete plan everything has become seemingly out of hand.
In 2015, I wrote an article denouncing the rising femicide, and called on, not only the government but also certain organizations to make efforts to ensure that we stamp out the seeming Guyanese curse—that of our men being responsible for putting our women in the hearse. https://kaieteurnewsonline.com/2015/12/05/guyanese-women-find-themselves-in-a-catch-22-situation-2/
To strengthen my point I made an impassioned plea for a moratorium— a move that fell not only on deaf ears, but also on hardened and reluctant minds, as the latest newspaper report revealed the startling fact that 10 Guyanese women at home and abroad have been killed in the first five months of the current year. https://kaieteurnewsonline.com/2015/11/03/a-demon-has-entered-the-mind-of-guyanese-men/
The home has also become a dangerous place for women as well as for children, as almost all cases of femicide and uxoricide occurred in the home after the female either ended the relationship, announced her intention to do so, or was suspected of infidelity.
The perpetrators continue to operate with no risk of being punished, as clearly the government has failed to show that it has a constructive plan aimed at stemming the flow. The simplicity of prevailing views point to violence towards women as a form of control, a behaviour intended to ensure obedience and to express authority and power.
What then is the underlying explanation for these extreme manifestations of twisted male possessiveness, and blatant absence of emotional maturation? No longer can the government of Guyana, its criminal justice system, and legal advocates explain away this scourge by referring to a single central variable such as male possessiveness or jealousy.
For not only is such a mode of thinking simplistic and partial but outmoded at best. The murders must be viewed and understood as a phenomenon imbedded in a certain variety of factors that amalgamate and create the conditions for murder.
How do we deal with love? Or how are we to deal with love? The conundrum lies in the reality that in the name of love, women are no longer desirous of remaining and/or being intimate with their male partners, and in the name of love they are being murdered by these same male partners.
It is obvious that the woman is seen as the partner’s whole world and the bane of his existence. Therefore, amorously stated, if his ability to see himself as a human being depends on the female being part of his life, how can he let her go? Love has converted her into a hostage of sorts—a hostage to the life of the male- thereby putting her own life at risk.
The act of committing suicide on account of unrequited love is not an uncommon story. In fact some even regard it as the ideal display of true love.
Are lengthy periods of incarceration the panacea? Is the eye for eye rule applicable? What love got to do with it? Love is like a loaded gun! The lyrics of many love songs may be no more than mere superficial clichés about love, but when these same clichés are genuinely adopted with no attention to reality, then it does become a loaded gun.
The call is now being sounded for a rigorous reexamination of punishment outcomes for the perpetrators of femicide, as well as the implementation and application of therapy for children who may have been subjected to the ongoing domestic abuse, witnessed or survived the attack that finally claimed the life of their mother.
Attributable to the current displayed ineptitude of the
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