By Junior “Soca” Jones
Our nation today, Thursday, Jan. 2, officially took its seat on the UN Security Council. Whatever role our nation will play, as a Vincentian I stand proud. What will make me even more proud though is if for 2020 our government, opposition and all other relevant authorities, will get up off their combined backsides and seek to effectively protect the battered children and women of our country.
We need to change laws, implement laws and enforce laws. There is no way that a child of 15 years should be able to consent to sex. TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. There is no way that 11-, 12-, and 13-year-old girls should be impregnated by adult men and these men not be subjected to a life sentence. TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
How do the authorities justify the fact that most of these men are not investigated even after the pregnancy is detected? And please don’t tell me about parents’ lack of cooperation. They are our nation’s children and we, as a nation, have an obligation to protect them.
There is no way that our women should be battered, bruised and raped by known aggressors and these men go free or serve minor sentences. TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.
Where is the voice of the church and its thousands of followers? Where are our other organisations? Are our courts doing enough? Are the police doing enough? It is a new year. We need new focus and commitments where the weakest among us are concerned. St. Vincent, it is time to stand up. For God’s sake, as a nation, let us stand up. Happy New Year to everyone…
Well said, Mr. Jones!
Well, I wish that this UN appointment would bring jobs to the masses of unemployed in SVG. The 46%.
When you consider the PM Ralph E Gonsalves has been accused of sexual assault and rape and never been brought before a court to answer those allegations, what else do you expect.
The family regime of SVG, tells us that they are on the side of the abused and dispossessed, but just take a look at their latest UN general assembly vote pertaining to the supposed dispossessed. The SVG team direction was to abstain the vote which they did.
The plight of the “battered children and women of our country” is but a way of life like in all backward and neglected countries being ruled over by family regimes whose outwardly stated policy is national wellbeing but in truth, their own is what we actually see, be it in Latin America, Asia, Africa or the Caribbean.
“Africa’s richest woman and British-educated daughter of Angola’s former leader has part of her £1.7billion fortune frozen and claims her family is being ‘victimised’ by the country’s new president in corruption crackdown. Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s 38 years in power were synonymous with corruption, nepotism and authoritarianism.
Isabel dos Santos, the 46-year-old daughter of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, has a fortune estimated at £1.7 billion which she amassed during her father’s reign in which billions of dollars of state funds went missing, according to investigations by international financial institutions.
Isabel dos Santos accrued her vast fortune while father Jose Eduardo was leader. He retired but his successor fired her from the oil company she was appointed to. Angola’s court has now frozen her assets and seized shares worth £750 million. But she has slammed the ‘politically motivated witch-hunt’ and denied claims”. Her worth $6.035 billion XCD!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850355/Africas-richest-woman-1-7billion-fortune-frozen-corruption-crackdown.html
You say that “We need to change laws, implement laws and enforce laws.” Look this family regime has been ruling here for goodness you know how long and even have refused to let us have that “FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW” so why would they change anything?
Child sexual abuse and violence against women will continue here for as long as we remain a backward people, being ruled over by a family regime, they being a non-representative government, interested only in their own welfare and wellbeing.