Category Archives: Violence

Machel Montano in Brawl at Zen

Machel at Club Zen last night
Machel Montano and Mr. Howard Chin Lee at Club Zen last night

Trinidad and Tobago News
April 26, 2007

Is it a twist of fate or could it be ‘jumbie’ at Zen? Zen is once more in the news with another controversy; this time, it involves local superstar, Machel Montano who is known for his energetic performances. This incident took place following a function Machel Montano held at club Zen to thank various parties for the success of his Carnival and Madison Square Garden concerts.
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Amy’s Mom Freed

By Newsday Reporter
Tuesday, April 17 2007

Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

JailANITA ANAMUNTHODO, mother of Amy Emily Anamunthodo, the four-year-old girl who was raped and beaten to death last year, was yesterday freed on six charges of wilful neglect and child abandonment. Deputy Chief Magistrate Mark Wellington, presiding in the San Fernando First Magistrate’s Court, freed the mother due to the non-appearance of police complainant PC Hamilton (since August 2006) and other prosecution witnesses.

Wellington yesterday discharged Anamunthodo, 19, of Marabella, who had been in custody since she was charged in May last year. She was granted bail but no one went forward to stand the bail of $7,500.
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The Valley of Hopelessness

By Stephen Kangal
February 19, 2007

Red HouseThe national community must show its outrage on the post -Cabinet uttering made by Minister Valley on the crime situation and widely reported in the media on Thursday 24 January. After the Manning Administration has led many citizens without any protection into the valley of the shadow of untimely and premature death and rampant crime that also potentially threatens each one of us, Minister Valley repeats the insensitivity of his Prime Minister and proceeds to justify our spiraling crime pandemic as being part of a “global event”. It has nothing to do, according to him, with the total failure of his Government to guarantee our life, liberty, the security of the person and our hard-earned property. For him crime, like inflation, is a feature of the global village of which T&T is a part. It is externally determined.
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We are failing the promises of Independence

By Errol F. Hosein
January 27, 2007

Trini PeopleThe recent slaughter of four individuals in Morvant including a police officer and the horrific exposure to the atrocity by a young child, is a startling reminder that few are safe from harms way in our present-day society.

We are rapidly becoming a dysfunctional society in which crime and criminals command respect. Too frequently we make comparative analysis about crime and criminal activity in other countries around the world as if to minimize the pain and suffering that we are presently experiencing. This is simply morbid.
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Two Visions of Trinidad and Tobago

By Linda E. Edwards

Domestic ViolenceThe screaming headlines of a woman beheaded by “A close family member”- always a husband, were stunning, even for Trinidad’s papers. I found myself again asking why? What can people do to prevent this? The island is really so small that a woman cannot get away from a man who wants to hunt her down. Of course he drank poison. How often in the last five years has this scenario been repeated in Central? I said to myself that I wasn’t going to write any more columns on women being killed by dotish men whom they should have left long ago. Then Ras Tyehimba wrote a piece that gave some hope. A man was talking to men about the serious issue of how they treat women. His piece did not generate half as much comment as did the pieces I wrote first on the issue of land reform in Zimbabwe, and then on the issue of “Indians” pleading for ‘rescue from discrimination’ to the Indian Vice- President. This latter piece resulted in twenty nine comments. There are thirty-two listed, but three are clarification and additional documentation from my own keyboard.
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Male Arrogance, Abuse and Intimate Relationships

by Ras Tyehimba
October 17, 2006

Recently, I read in the media of the incident involving Anita Lutchmepersad, who was forced to leave her home because of the threatening abuses of a ‘close male relative’. After she left, he burnt down the house and drank detergent in an apparent suicide bid. According to one newspaper report, the male relative had seen a text message from one of Anita’s co-workers and misinterpreted it, getting in to a fit of rage. Another newspaper report told of Devica Mahabir who survived being poisoned, beaten and burned but was left horribly disfigured by her husband who killed himself after murdering her lover. What are the factors at play in such scenarios? How do so many relationships which SEEM to start off so good and which are supposedly based on ‘love’ be filled with so much mistrust, pain and abuse?
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Why No Sex Offenders Registry?

ViolenceThey did not kidnap and rape anyone important.

Comment by Linda E. Edwards

There is a shady gray area where the minds of many men seem to “lurk”. It is the area of “rough sex”, “stealing a piece(tiefing)”, “she asking for trouble”, and “she like it so”. This gray area of fantasy sends men to watch movies that women, sensible women, would not be caught dead watching. It sends them to “gentlemen’s clubs” – titty bars and “cat houses” to see acts of sex, real and simulated, that their wives would not perform for fear that their husbands beat the daylights out of them. “Wey she learn that from? I ent teach she dat”. Men still make clear distinctions about women and sex.
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A New Type of Criminal Is Emerging

By Linda E. Edwards

The Laventille Hills east Port of Spain area earned a reputation, deservedly or not, for high crime against persons, drug involvement, gangs, knife fights and shootings and so on, and for years, army and police units have focused on east Port of Spain in an attempt to stamp out “crime”. People are still dying there at a high rate, higher than the norm for the country. Central however, is emerging as the SEX crime capital of the country, for crimes against children.
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Inappropriate Teacher and School Stuff

By Linda E. Edwards

What has happened in that “prestigious primary school” in West Trinidad, as reported in the Guardian on Saturday, June 3, 2006, is stunning in its barbarity. Educators at a school allow a security guard to rape an eleven year old girl a second time, in order to “catch him in the act”, and then allowed him to leave without calling the police?
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