Tips Femeninos | Candlelight Movement signs petition to help protect women

The re­cent deaths of Ashan­ti Ri­ley and An­drea Bharatt are the «fi­nal straw that broke the camel’s back» ac­cord­ing to Syn­er­gy TV host and mem­ber of the Can­dle­light Move­ment, Stephan Reis.

On Fri­day night, the Can­dle­light Move­ment launched a na­tion­al pe­ti­tion which the group will take to Par­lia­ment.

The main pro­pos­als are the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of weapons such as pep­per spray and tasers, fast-track­ing the use of firearms for women, the reg­u­la­tion of the «PH» dri­ver sys­tem, a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and sys­temic reg­u­la­tion of the is­suance of mo­tor ve­hi­cle li­cences.

Reis, who spoke at the launch of the Can­dle­light Move­ment’s pe­ti­tion dri­ve on Fri­day night, re­ferred to cas­es where mi­nors were killed such as the Akiel Cham­bers case, the Sean Luke case and four-year-old Amy Emi­ly An­na­muntho­do who was beat­en to death and he said the coun­try has had enough of these heinous crimes.

«Ashan­ti Ri­ley and An­drea Bharatt were the straw that broke the camel’s back. The dif­fer­ence is that we will not switch off and move on this time. And we are not go­ing to al­low peo­ple in the red build­ing to move on ei­ther. Every moth­er, every fa­ther of a vic­tim of a crime can­not move on that eas­i­ly,» he told hun­dreds of peo­ple who stood un­der um­brel­las and came de­spite the heavy rain­fall on Fri­day night on Knox Street, Port-of-Spain.