Shyne on Murder of Women: I Wish This Was Not an Issue We Had to Discuss

Moses “Shyne” Barrow

Over the past two weeks, two young women were brutally killed in Belize. The murders of nineteen-year-old Imari Galvez on the Hummingbird Highway and thirty-one-year-old Mirza Morales at her home in El Progresso Village, Cayo on Friday night shocked the nation. Today, Opposition Leader Shyne Barrow denounced the murder of women. He said that after having spent thirteen years in opposition, the P.U.P Government should have had the solutions to crime and violence.

Moses “Shyne” Barrow, Leader of the Opposition

“I believe that we’re in a dangerous place right now where femicide is the order of the day. The young lady, Ms. Galvez, a teenager murdered, six months before that, another young lady was found in a shallow grave in the same vicinity. We certainly have a problem with violence against women in this country. The doctor that allegedly sexually assaulted the young lady in Toledo – and it was not until the reporting from Channel Seven and other media houses that something was done about it, but this all goes back to citizen insecurity. This all goes back to a priority. The Prime Minister is the chairman of the National Security Council, and we have a security crisis, a citizen security crisis in this country. We have problems as far as prosecution and convictions. The rate is dismal. People go get arrested, they sit there for a year or two, and then the DPP makes, uh, submission of no case. So again, it is not that this problem just appeared when. The PUP took office, but it is that the PUP had 13 years to come up with the solutions so that when they became government, they would be able to implement the solutions. I think that’s the way we need to look at it, rather than looking at it the way they try to look at it, which is to blame everything on the previous administration, but that doesn’t solve the problem. There are so many things to tackle that I don’t want one of the things that I am discussing with the media to be women being murdered, teenagers being murdered. I would like that to not be one of the issues.”