Vigil For Maple Batalia Focuses On Ending Violence Against Women

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SURREY – The family of murdered Indo-Canadian teen Maple Batalia held a vigil to remember her and many other women victims of domestic violence or violence against women!

Their main goal was to address the topic that remains an issue both in the South Asian community and in the mainstream society.

Despite the rain, many gathered in Surrey’s Holland Park at 6 p.m. on Saturday not only to commemorate Batalia’s death, but the deaths of other murdered women including Manjit Panghali, Laura Szendrei and Poonam Randhawa.

“We just wanted to grow the event and turn it more into a bigger picture, which is taking a stance against violence against women,” said Batalia’s sister Roseleen Batalia. “These women were just every day normal women, and this can happen to anyone. Violence can affect anyone regardless of their situation and who they are.”

Ending violent crimes against women starts with education, she says.

“We need to focus more on how to improve relations, and how to teach men to respect women, and how to teach women to be in healthy relationships.”

The Batalia family is commemorating Maple’s life with bursaries for health sciences students, which they said have received wide support from the community and continue to grow.

“This is my aim,” says Sarbjit, Maple’s mother. “I [would] like to stop this killing, because I don’t want anyone to have the same pain I’m feeling.”

It has been two years since Maple Batalia was brutally gunned down in the parkade of Simon Fraser University’s Surrey Campus, where she had been studying.

Maple Batalia’s ex-boyfriend Gurjinder ‘Gary’ Dhaliwal, 20, is one of the men charged in her murder.