In just a matter of days, Aamina Mohammed, a 30-year-old geriatric nurse of Debe was found with her throat slit in bushes off Retrench Village Road.
Jennifer Rampersad, a 35-year-old, was chopped in her bed at her home in New Grant.
Ms Mohammed was supposed to appear in the Princes Town Magistrates’ Court on Monday for a hearing on a domestic violence matter.
On February 22, Rachel Chadee was allegedly attacked by her ex-lover and doused with acid. Police believe that the suspect is in hiding and is being protected as he evades police.
Anessa Murray of Cascade was found shot dead in her car at Penn Trace, Cunupia, on February 3. Police could identify no motive for the killing.
Japanese pan player Asami Nagakiya was found strangled at Queen’s Park Savannah on the morning of Ash Wednesday still clad in her Carnival costume.
That death may have attracted legitimate concern that the outpouring of grief over the young pan player’s loss appeared to outstrip the public outrage against equally appalling murders and acts of violence against local women.
A large part of the responsibility for protests that ensued in the wake of the Japanese woman’s death might be laid at the feet of former Mayor Raymond Tim Kee who managed to quite publicly polarise the public perception of violence against women.
These disturbing acts of violence against women and the twisted skeins of imagined responsibility formed a challenging local preamble to International Women’s Day, which has adopted a call for parity as its theme for 2016.
Between 2005 and 2015, 263 murders were the result of domestic violence, 151 victims were female.
At a public walk at the Queen’s Park Savannah on Saturday, Nicole Joseph-Chin of T&T Vital Voices said that “…women’s bodies are actually the catalyst for issues that connect in terms of abuse.”
Diana Mahabir-Wyatt countered that after 40 years of dealing with domestic violence in T&T, she could not “agree that it is just because women have attractive bodies that that causes domestic violence…that is not even barely realistic.”
The gulf between those two perspectives was crystallised by the public demonstrations that followed Mr Tim Kee’s statements on the death of the young pannist and for far too many citizens, those issues remain unresolved and unreconciled.
The recent confusion that has accompanied the circulation of notably unrevealing topless photos of both of leading female Olympic gymnasts, Thema Williams and Marisa Dick, focused less on the photos than on puzzlement about the inability of the T&T Gymnastics Federation to separate the youthful pride in hard-earned physiques that were exclusively the business of the young women involved from the assessment athletic achievement and potential which is the federation’s ambit.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which an equally unrevealing photograph of a male athlete would lead to equivalent contemplation of sanctions.
Police officers managing issues of domestic violence cannot be neutral in their evaluations of assailant and victim, particularly in a country in which such large numbers of women end up dead in such cases.
Parity is not always equality. It can be the pursuit of relevant equivalency in the way that gender issues are treated under law and in real world practice.
Parity, as the partners collaborating on the 2016 edition of International Women’s Day have acknowledged, will come slowly, but it can be accelerated by encouraging greater understanding of gender differences and needs.