Japanese Woman Murdered in Trinidad and Tobago

The Caribbean Is One Nation.

Submitted by the Mahogany Coconut Group

Asami Nagakiya with friends during carnival

The murder of Japanese national, Asami Nagakiya, in the Trinidad capital Port of Spain, during the Carnival activities, has thrown Trinidad and Tobago and indeed the Caribbean, into the international limelight for all the wrong reasons. While many will question our adding the Caribbean to this unfortunate incident, we at Mahogany Coconut believe that when any one country in our region achieves positive international recognition, it redounds to the benefit of the entire region. When one of our countries is highlighted for any negative action, it therefore reflects negatively on all of us.

Asami Nagakiya was not only a carnival reveler because from many reports, she was also a kind of cultural ambassador, who had mastered playing the steel pan which is the indigenous musical instrument of Trinidad and Tobago. She was actively teaching and encouraging the playing of the pan in her country. Hence this act of violence has robbed Trinidad and Tobago of a person, who had fallen in love with its culture and its people.  We therefore extend our profound sadness to the family of Ms. Nagakiya and hope that this senseless act of violence will not deter them from positively viewing the people of Trinidad and Tobago, who for the most part, are hospitable, fun loving and generous. We have posited, on several occasions, that Trinidad and Tobago stands the real risk of becoming a country run by thugs and a frightening crime rate. Failure to comprehensively and ruthlessly eradicate the criminal element will be its total undoing.

Unfortunately the Mayor of Port of Spain, Mr. Raymond Tim Kee, in his response to the strangling of Ms. Nagakiya, said that women should be less lewd at carnival time, thereby reducing the acts of the deviants, who believe that scantily clad women are sending a message that they want to be preyed upon. Such a response automatically inflamed the country, and many are calling for his removal from office. Indeed Mayor Kee’s response has ignited international condemnation. What is even more alarming is Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s very quick response that Mayor Kee would not be kicked out of office. We strongly believe that Rowley should have waited a bit longer before he jumped to Kee’s defense. For a Prime Minister, who for the most part has been rather slow in responding to many other developments, his rushing into this issue has left us baffled.

We can only hope that those who killed Ms. Nagakiya will be caught and made to pay for her murder. Once more we call on Prime Minister Rowley to create and execute a major crime plan to save the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago from the path of crime and violence on which it  is currently travelling.

We join in the call for the removal of Mayor Kee from office. We do so because his response to the murder of a visitor to his country and city was very insensitive to say the very least. We also believe that his removal from office will also send a clear message to the world that sexism holds no part in a true democracy.