UN child rights expert condemns ‘profane’ Easter Sunday shows

Child rights advocate Faith Marshall-Harris has sharply criticised the decision to stage events featuring artistes who sing profane lyrics on Easter Sunday, describing the move as a violation of the most sacred day in the Christian calendar and warning of its impact on Barbadian youth.

In a scathing statement to Barbados TODAY, she questioned the values being imparted to the nation’s young people and linking the normalisation of such behaviours to a rise in violence and substance abuse.

She said: “We are supposed to be a Christian community—at least statistically a large majority of us so profess. How, therefore, can we violate the most significant day in the Christian calendar, to host a show where some of the lyrics, as we know historically, will certainly not be sacred but will be profoundly profane?” 

Marshall-Harris continued: “What messages are we sending to our children and young persons who are trapped in this rapidly deteriorating ethos we are heedlessly creating? How can we expect anything but strange fruit when we continue to plant seeds of destruction, where our 16, 17 and 18 year olds chase each other with guns, disputing ownership of a few bags of weed.”

The child rights advocate also raised alarm over the anticipated illegal drug activity at these events and the inability of law enforcement to bring it under control.

“And related to that will be the widespread and excessive consumption of marijuana at such an event where the vendors will be out in full force, and which, apparently the police find impossible to control, presumably because of the large numbers involved,” she stated.

Marshall-Harris voiced her support for the Acting Director of Public Prosecutions for highlighting the link between marijuana use and social problems.

“I applaud the Acting DPP for his recent stance about the high consumption of marijuana and its consequences, and join forces with him: I saw this trend emerging in the Juvenile Court many years ago and spoke and wrote about it then. I long for more community leaders like him to speak out,” she declared.

She concluded with a call to action: “Let us all do our bit to pull this country back from the Gadarene abyss to which we seem to be heading,” referencing the biblical story of the Gadarene swine, in which a herd of pigs rushes headlong into destruction, possessed by demons that once inhabited a man healed by Jesus Christ. (LG)