Mourners maintain candles throughout a candlelight vigil in Brooklyn on Monday night time, honoring 11-year-old Adrianna Younge, whose loss of life in Guyana has sparked international requires justice.
Picture by Tracey Khan
With candles flickering within the night breeze and voices rising in songs of hope and remembrance, lots of gathered Monday night time in Brooklyn to honor Adrianna Younge — the 11-year-old Guyanese schoolgirl whose tragic loss of life has change into a robust image of grief, outrage, and a world demand for justice.
Adrianna’s physique was discovered final week within the swimming pool of the Double Day Lodge on Guyana’s west coast, shortly after she vanished throughout a household outing. Her loss of life — dominated a drowning by a joint post-mortem workforce from Guyana, the U.S., and Barbados — stays shrouded in thriller, and her group is demanding solutions.
“She was solely a baby,” mentioned Melissa Atwell Holder, a vigil organizer and diaspora activist, her voice trembling with emotion. “They are saying she drowned — however did she drown in that pool? As a result of that pool was searched, time and again. And she or he wasn’t there. So we ask: when did she die? And the way?”
The Brooklyn vigil got here simply days after one other was held in Queens, each a part of a rising wave of calls amongst Caribbean nationals in the USA. Comparable demonstrations are happening throughout Guyana, Barbados, and the UK, united by grief, fury, and a willpower to see accountability.
Adrianna’s household and villagers locally of Tuschen imagine she was murdered, presumably as a part of a ritualistic act. Preliminary police experiences later retracted claimed she left the lodge willingly with an grownup man, an announcement her family referred to as a blatant cover-up to guard the lodge’s highly effective homeowners.
Public backlash was swift. A regional police commander was positioned on depart. The lodge — as soon as the scene of the same loss of life in 2012 — was burned to the bottom, and it stays unclear whether or not the blaze was set by protesters or insiders.
Rickford Burke, president of the Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID), and group advocate and founding father of United Bridge Builders Mission Bonita Montique addressed the gang, calling for sweeping police reform and justice for Adrianna and others whose deaths have rattled the nation.
“This isn’t nearly Adrianna,” Burke mentioned. “That is a few sample of injustice that retains repeating itself in Guyana and we is not going to stand by quietly.”
In current months, Guyana has been rocked by a string of high-profile killings. Amongst them: the police-related deaths of Ronaldo Peters and Keon Fogenay; the brutal homicide of Waveny LaCruz and her daughters, Maline and Sueann, allegedly by Waveny’s husband; and the deadly shootings of Marissa Beete and Kenesha Marie Juman Vaughn, each killed by intimate companions.
These tragedies have triggered a nationwide reckoning — with residents demanding accountability, higher policing, and strong protections for ladies and youngsters.
“They suppose this may go away. It gained’t,” mentioned Amecia Simon, Adrianna’s mom, standing in entrance of a portrait of her daughter surrounded by flowers and candlelight. I cannot relaxation till the reality is thought and justice is served.”
Simon shared that the mom of Sideek Juman — the person killed on the identical lodge in 2012 — contacted her after Adrianna’s loss of life. “She informed me, ‘I by no means obtained justice for my son, however I’ll stand with you till you get it in your daughter.’”
Because the vigil ended, the gang held a second of silence. Some wept quietly. Others whispered prayers and songs.
“This little woman’s life mattered,” mentioned Atwell Holder. “We are saying her title tonight and each night time till justice is completed — not only for Adrianna, however for all of the lives misplaced. We is not going to be silenced.”
