Murdered Indo-Canadian Teen Maple Batalia’s family is shining a light on domestic violence at a candlelight vigil for their daughter on – and all female victims of domestic violence, which is being held in Surrey’s Holland park on Saturday (today) at 6 p.m. at Holland Park in Surrey..
SURREY – Two years after Indo-Canadian teen Maple Batalia was gunned down, family and friends are inviting the community to a candlelight vigil to address domestic violence.
Batalia’s older sister, Roseleen, said Monday the event, the third of its kind since her murder, is being broadened this year to shine a spotlight on violence against women in general.
“There’s been a lot of focus on the bad guys, and often the women get left out,” Roseleen said. “We’re really avoiding that in Maple’s case.”
Meanwhile ,one of the first students to be awarded a bursary from the Maple Batalia Memorial Fund will attend vigil.
Emily Leaman has been awarded $1,500 to study health sciences at Simon Fraser University. She aspires to work as a family physician in Canada as well as internationally through an organization such as Médecins Sans Frontières or the Canadian Red Cross.
She has already demonstrated a strong sense of community engagement as a volunteer for the Red Cross First Aid Team at her high school, a medical first responder at community events with St. John Ambulance, and as founder of a Red Cross Club at the University of New Brunswick.
She now focuses her volunteerism on the issue of HIV/AIDS through volunteering with Positive Living BC as well as the SFU AIDS Awareness Network.
To date, the Batalia family has raised more than $78,000 for this bursary fund, and their goal is to exceed $100,000. They were able to support two young women this year and hope to sponsor three students in 2014.
Batalia, who was tragically shot and killed on Sept. 28, 2011, was studying health sciences and science and planned to become a doctor.
The vigil is being held on the second anniversary of her death to commemorate the young student as well as Manjit Panghali and Poonam Randhawa, who were also victims of violence, to bring attention to the need to end violence against women.
Batalia’s former boyfriend, Gurjinder (Gary) Dhaliwal, was charged with first-degree murder in relation to her death. Gursimar Singh Bedi was charged with manslaughter with a firearm and being an accessory after the fact.
The vigil is less about calling for justice than it is about preventing similar acts of violence from happening again, Roseleen said.
“We want to remember that this is essentially becoming an epidemic,” she said. “As I’m speaking to you right now, there’s woman being abused, a woman being killed, around the world.”
The public is invited to bring LED lights (because they don’t go out) to the candlelight vigil at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 28 at Holland Park, at 100 Avenue and King George Boulevard.
