The Vanished: Beach Waves Cry for Antigua’s Children
Chantel had simply been walking home from school when she
accepted a ride from a woman. She trusted, as children should be able to, and
for that, her life was stolen, along with a piece of Antigua's innocence.
The island wept for Chantel and the others who have either disappeared without a trace, or found murdered and mutilated. You see, Antigua’s soil holds the tears of too many. Just months earlier, teenagers Yenifer Bridge and Achazia James were found murdered. Yenifer, a 16-year-old mother, disappeared one night and her toddler son was found wandering alone. Her body, later recovered, bore signs of brutal violence. Achazia, only 15, was found mutilated on a beach, the wounds so telling, they spoke of a wickedness the island still cannot comprehend.
Each of these young lives is a name that is deeply etched
into the memory of a grieving nation. Antigua was always a safe place to raise
a child. Never before these recent disappearances and killings were the locals afraid
to have their children on the streets. This was a nation that understood
community and lived the adage that it takes a village.
After the first sign that the peace of this nation was about
to be cruelly shattered, there should have been a mobilization of intelligence
and resources before another child’s body was found. It took the brutal loss of
Chantel to stir a new kind of anger. But the signs were there. They were there
when the missing persons list quietly grew longer, when mothers pleaded for
help finding sons and daughters who seemed to vanish into thin air. They were
there when 16-year-olds, young adults, and LGBTQ+ advocate. Silent alarms have been ringing.
When power protects itself, it demands silence from the
oppressed. It comforts itself with shallow statements and "intensified
investigations" that rarely bring justice. It praises itself when an
arrest is made quickly in the case of a high-profile murder, yet drags its feet
when it’s a teenage girl from a struggling village. Justice, it seems, is still
unequally distributed even in death.
The silence from officials who are the very structures
charged with safeguarding the people is deafening. Where is the forensic
support that could solve these crimes? Where are the tough laws to protect
minors? Where is the urgency when the vulnerable go missing, rather than only when
political elites are touched? I am not saying that anyone’s case should be
brokered at the expense of the next. I am, however, saying that no one’s case
should be brokered at the expense of the next. Who is disappearing our young
people for body parts?
And harder still: What the hell has happened to ‘community’?
Evil does not thrive in a vacuum. Someone knows. Someone saw. Someone heard.
Evil relies on the silence of neighbors, friends, and sometimes family, too
afraid, too broke, too complicit to speak up. Every time somebody withholds
truth, somebody else’s child is left even more vulnerable.
It is not only external structures that must be challenged.
The culture itself too - the normalization of relationships between grown men
and teenage girls (pisses me off), the whispered acceptance of exploitation,
the rushed judgment of young mothers like Yenifer – all must be confronted. The
church, too, must reckon with its failure. How have those who proclaim Micah
6:8—to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God—remained silent until
the faces of their own children could be reflected in the tragedy? The church,
with its hyper-judgement has always been central to any decision to disconnect from
religion. Check yourselves, religious bigots.
Although I do not live in Antigua anymore, it is the land of
my birth and a nation that I still pray for and hope to see freed from internal
and external slave-shaped mindsets and practices. My siblings still live there,
and I am scared to death that my nieces and nephews may become statistics of
this new evil that has taken hold of my twin-island state where waves of violence
bring grief to lash the sea-shores.
Worse, Antigua’s grief is not isolated. It is part of a
global mourning: for the missing schoolgirls of Nigeria, the Indigenous women
disappearing across Canada and the U.S., and the thousands of children
trafficked in Latin America. Violence against the vulnerable - whether in the
Caribbean or elsewhere - is a global indictment.
We weep because history teaches us that when societies grow complacent, it is the innocent who always suffer. We weep because we are human. Hannah wept for a child she did not yet have. Hagar wept when she believed her son would die in the desert. Bathsheba wept after David took what he had no right to take. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, wept for a nation that refused to listen until it was too late. And Jesus wept over a dead friend, a faithless city, and a world that did not recognize its own salvation.
Today, we weep for Antigua’s children. But we must also act.
Tears that do not move hands and feet toward justice are wasted. Admittedly, I
feel kind of helpless… But I have a voice, and I will not shut up about shit.
This is how I embody my faith. Prayers are fine – then what? When will it be
time to start dismantling the systems and silences that allow crap like this to
happen? Change will not come through shallow speeches, or only prayers. It will
come when we tear down every idol of apathy. How the hell can people care more
about what age a mother has a child more than they care about the root causes
of her becoming a mother while she herself is still a child?
Chantel. Yenifer. Achazia. Keon. Donna-Marie. Orden. Kyle.
Kevin. Noah... These are names of people who are calling us to action. If
we do not act, and demand better from our leaders, churches, communities, and
ourselves, then we are complicit. The blood of the innocents is mixed with the beach
water.
Justice must roll down like waters, and righteousness like the
ever-roaring beach waves.
#NotOneMore #EndTheSilence #EndTheViolence #WavesOfGrief #AntiguaandBarbuda
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