Members of Hear the Children's Cry and other organisations march to show their disgust with the apparently increasing number of abductions and murders of the nation's children. Armed with placards bearing the photographs of children who have been killed, the group, which gathered at the Police Officers' Club in St Andrew, marched along Hope Road to Half-Way Tree square. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

Fed up with the apparently increasing cases of abduction and murders of the nation's children, advocacy group Hear the Children's Cry and other agencies yesterday took to the streets to register their disgust.

Armed with placards bearing the photographs of children who have been killed, the group, which gathered at the Police Officers' Club, St Andrew, marched on Hope Road to Half-Way Tree square. The route continued down Half-Way Tree Road, left on Chelsea Avenue, right on Trafalgar Road, and right on Knutsford Boulevard. The march culminated at Emancipation Park, where the Child Development Agency staged a vigil for children who have died violently.

"We are traumatised, distressed, angry, disturbed and hurting about the atrocities and this new phenomenon of attack against our children and women," Doreen Frankson, one of the organisers of the march, told The Gleaner.

Frankson, a former head of the Jamaica Manufacturers' Associa-tion, said the adults of Jamaica have failed children.

"When I was a child, the only issue was to go to school. Now, we have put so much weight on our children's shoulders," Frankson said.

Drawing out of slumber

She noted that the march was an attempt to get civil society out of its slumber.

She noted that the committee hopes to forge a partnership with the media, police, private sector and other organisations, to "stop the madness".

"We are here to take a stance. Our silence is probably the strongest message," former member of parliament Aloun Assamba, who represented the Lions Club, told those who turned out for the march.

More than 70 children have been killed since the start of the year. Yesterday was observed as World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse.