Canadians protest after death of 2 Sikh kids

TORONTO: Canadians took to the streets in Montreal to protest against rising cases of domestic violence after an Indo-Canadian Sikh was recently charged with murder in the death of his two children.

Screaming "enough is enough" and "not one more", about a dozen protesters marched from downtown Montreal's Place du Canada to Parc Emilie-Gamelin demanding that swift action must be taken against domestic violence, CBC News reported.

Kamaljit Arora, 45, was was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of his 11-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter in Laval.

He was also accused of assaulting and strangling his wife.

In another case, an 82-year-old man was charged with second-degree murder, after his 90-year-old wife was found dead in a seniors' residence in Quebec.

"How many more women must be killed before things change?" she said. "Who will raise their hands with me to say that enough is enough?" Christine Giroux, a survivor of intimate partner violence and the organiser of the protest, told CBC News.

Protesters said they want expanded use of domestic violence tracking bracelets to protect victims from their attackers, and more severe criminal punishments for abusers at a federal level.

In a series of latest initiatives to fight domestic violence, the Quebec government had said in December 2021 that violent partners and people accused of domestic violence could be ordered to wear tracking bracelets.

The bracelets can only be used for people who have been given sentences ranging from six months to two years less a day.

Distraught and shocked, Arora's neighbours in Laval said they were still trying to come to terms with the deaths of two children in their locality.

"I wasn't able to process it in my head... How could someone do that to their own children? Nobody should go through a situation like this," Parm Kamal Singh, a distant relative of the victims, told a Brampton-based TV channel.

According to CTV News, between May 2020 and now, 44 women and children have been killed in Quebec in family violence situations.

Half of the women were between the ages of 24 and 44 and 16 per cent of the murder victims were children as young as three.

Last year, 5,318 incidents of intimate-partner violence were reported to Montreal police, representing 23.7 per cent of all reported crimes against people in Montreal.

Since January, 19 deaths have been linked to domestic violence in Quebec -- 12 women, six children and one male partner.

In 2021, 17 women in Quebec were slain by an intimate partner or former partner. There were 21 femicides in 2020 and 11 in 2019, the Montreal Gazette reported.