March for victims

(CNS): As the community mourns the passing of one of the Cayman Islands’ strongest voices against domestic violence, the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Grand Cayman will be holding its annual Silent Witness March on Saturday, 18 October. Each year the BPW holds thisevent to pay tribute to those who have been victims of violence.

The march starts promptly at 12:30 at the Government Administration Building (Glass House) passing by the Immigration building, the Central Police Station, and the Courts Office and ending on the steps of the Legislative Assemble at 1:30 for a brief ceremony.

The Silent Witness March originated in the United States in 1990 as a reaction by women artists and writers to the growing number of victims of domestic violence they noticed in their small town in Minnesota. The solution was to speak out by creating 26 free-standing life-sized red wooden figures bearing the name of a woman who once lived among them whose life had been violently ended at the hands of an ex-husband, partner, or acquaintance.

A 27th figure was added to represent those countless women whose murders went unsolved or were erroneously ruled accidental. The organizers called the figures the Silent Witnesses, which were escorted along with 500 other women who showed up for that first silent procession.

The organisation aims to promote peace, healing and responsibility in adult relationships inorder to eliminate domestic murders by the year 2010 and to promote successful community-based domestic violence reduction efforts in order to reach zero domestic murders by 2010.

According to the United Nations the gender violence causes more ill health and deaths around the world than traffic accidents and malaria combined. It even rivals cancer as a cause of death and incapacity among women aged 16 to 44. The World Health Organization says that almost ¾ of women who are murdered were in situations where their intimate partners abused them before death.

The Business & Professional Women’s Club of the Cayman Islands ("BPW") is a non-partisan charter group of the International Federation of Business & Professional women founded in 1930. Its major goals include working for high standards of service in business, encourage the education of women and girls to acquire education, occupational training and advance education and to work for equal opportunities and status for women in economic, civil and political life in all countries.

For further information contact bpwgrandcayman@gmail.com