My thoughts are sparked today by an article in Newsday 2009-07-22 ‘Hang that Killer’. Shirley Ramnarine, mother of Polly Ramnarine who was murdered in Blue Basin River in March 2001, groans in pain and calls for the State to hang Ronald Tiwarie the murderer (convicted in 2004),
“My daughter was healthy and strong, she was going on 23 years…I want justice, I have to get it because that was my child, that was my belly. He has to hang, I cannot help that. Everybody belly go boil but not this mother’s own.
Every time I think about my daughter I feel a pain inside. Nobody knows what is in my heart, but the almighty God knows how I am grieving. So I want justice. That is all that we want.”
Shirley Ramnarine told reporters that her daughter Polly ‘had warned that she would die tragically’.
“She always tell me she was having a little dispute going on down there…She always told me, ‘Mamee, you going to hear I die. They go kill me.’
“I would say, ‘no how they go kill you? Who are they? They can’t take your life. They are not God? They can’t do you that.”
I take issue with some of the above from two angles:
a) Shirley Ramnarine’s sentiments and thoughts.
b) The non-personal issue of hangings being used as a plaster for a decomposed state of criminal justice on the Rock.
I empathise with Shirley Ramnarine. I would not like to feel her pain. However, she refers to a God, who does not give her the ‘justice’ she seeks. Instead she begs the State to hang Tiwarie immediately. Interestingly she believed at one point, in her reported conversation with Polly, that “They are not God. They can’t do that” i.e. that the people who Polly had feared might kill her, could not do so, because they were not God. So it seems in those circumstances a quality of God in Shirley’s mind is the ability to take away life.
However, now Shirley Ramnarine begs the State who - by no stretch of the imagination of a reasonable body of people – is God!! So I infer that Shirley ascribes a power she gave to God, to the State. In effect, this makes the State out to be God-like.
And that brings me to my second big issue. If the State was truly God-like on the Rock, would they have allowed a festering crime situation to develop so visibly from 1999 as it did. Surely not! Shirley Ramnarine appeals to the same State, that treated her and her people with contempt! However, this time she wants blood. So she is willing to befriend the State for just a moment perhaps and to give them God-like powers, to effect a form of 'justice' she seeks.
The reality is that hanging Tiwarie might serve her psychological need for vengeance. But vengeance is not justice. And devout Christians will know that the Lord said, ‘Vengeance is mine’.
There have been a number of calls for hangings on dee Rock recently. I’ve been tracking it quite closely as some may have seen at The Freedom Chambers: ‘It’s coming..hangings..’. The thirst for blood – vengeance – will I predict, drive the Executive to carry out these hangings. Mr Manning has declared that he – even as a Christian – is pro-hanging, so what’s the delay?
The hangings will happen - differently this time compared to the ‘hangfest’ in 1999. This time they will give the population a more measured and prolonged taste of ‘blood’. Yup – they will quench their thirst – take away their anger and need for vengeance. The population (collectively) will then ‘cool dong’ and become more receptive to an idea that hangings will deter crime on dee Rock. And that is where the electorate will be herded rong for another round of humping! Watch.
Hangings I assert are not the solution to homicides in T&T – not even part of the solution. Those inclined to respond (or not) – know one thing – I am not an anti-hanging activist. If the State wants to hang murderers, it must be done strictly to the letter of the law!
