Thousands have gathered in towns and cities across Ireland after the 'senseless' killing of the 23-year-old teacher, with echoes of the national reckoning that was sparked in the UK last year by the murder of Sarah Everard. Murphy was killed on Wednesday afternoon while going for a run along the banks of the Grand Canal in Tullamore in County Offaly
Continue reading...Category Archives: Violence against women and girls
Ashling Murphy: thousands attend vigil for Irish teacher killed going for run
Killing of 23-year-old in County Offaly has provoked outpouring of grief and anger in Ireland and beyond
Thousands have gathered in the town of Tullamore in Ireland as a vigil was held for Ashling Murphy.
Other memorials were also held across Ireland after the “senseless” killing of the 23-year-old teacher, with echoes of the national reckoning that was sparked in the UK last year by the murder of Sarah Everard.
Continue reading...As violence in the Congo escalates, thousands of displaced people are effectively held hostage | Vava Tampa
The UN has appealed for urgent help following militia attacks on camps for internally displaced people. But money alone won’t solve the crisis
In a bare and violent patch of land in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 75,000 people are living in what one UN field officer described as “hellish conditions”. Food and water are scarce. Even the flimsiest shelters are in short supply and sanitation is nonexistent. Girls have been raped by militiamen while attempting to find food in fields around the site. Ibrahim Cisse of Unicef says people here are effectively being held hostage.
Rhoe – a remote camp of internally displaced people (IDP) approximately 45km northeast of Bunia, the capital of DRC’s Ituri province – is “a tragedy waiting to happen”, according to those who have visited.
Continue reading...Glorification of Plymouth shooter by ‘incels’ prompts calls for action
Request for problem to be taken more seriously comes as data shows sixfold rise in visits to incel forums
The man who gunned down seven people, killing five, in a rampage in Plymouth is being lionised by an online “incel” community, with some ironically venerating him as a “saint” and celebrating the attack as an aid to their recruitment drive.
Jake Davison, 22, killed his mother, Maxine, 51, after a row before going on to fatally shoot four others and then himself in August last year. Before his death, he expressed misogynistic and homophobic tendencies, as well as angrily lamenting his failure to find a girlfriend.
Continue reading...Pope calls for end to violence against women in new year message
Celebrating mass in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, Francis says violence against women is insult to God
Pope Francis has used his new year’s message to call for an end to violence against women, saying it was an insult to God.
Celebrating mass in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, on the day the Roman Catholic church marks its annual World Day of Peace, Francis wove his new year’s homily around the themes of motherhood and women, saying it was they who kept the threads of life together.
Continue reading...Spain says it is first in Europe to officially count all femicides
Statistics on gender-based violence broadened beyond cases involving partners or exes
Official statistics on gender-based violence in Spain will be broadened to include killings of women and children by men regardless of whether there was a prior relationship between victim and killer, in what is being described as a first in Europe.
“What is not named does not exist,” said Spain’s equality minister, Irene Montero. “We have to recognise all of the victims and make visible all forms of violence – all machista [sexist] killings – so that we can put in place policies for prevention, early detection and eradication.”
Continue reading...Calls for femicide to become separate crime in Greece mount as two more women killed
‘It has to be recognised as a term and as a crime’, says government opposition, after unprecedented number of women murdered by partners
The Greek government has come under growing pressure to introduce femicide as an offence in the country’s penal code amid outrage over the growing and unprecedented number of women being brutally murdered by their partners.
Two women were murdered by their husbands within five days last week, bringing the death toll to 17 since January, according to state-run television. Both men allegedly told police that they had killed their wives out of fear that they would leave them.
Continue reading...A woman murdered every month: is this Greece’s moment of reckoning on femicide?
Lax punishments, police inaction and inadequate laws serve to embolden abusers, say campaigners – and stark figures bear them out
When a woman reported domestic violence in her building in the Athens suburb of Dafni in July, it took 25 minutes for the police to arrive. All the neighbours could hear Anisa’s husband abusing her but the police officers did not bother to get out of the patrol car. “They just rolled down their car windows and left,” Anisa’s neighbour angrily wrote on Facebook that evening. “No stress, guys. Television only cares about the bodies. So when he kills her, I’ll tell a television channel to call you.”
Less than three weeks later, Anisa was dead, murdered by her husband. Neither can be named in full as the case has yet to reach trial. In a statement to police, the perpetrator described how he was overcome with jealousy after Anisa allegedly cheated on him. “I took the knife with my right hand and entered her room. She was sleeping, and I rushed to her and lay on her, stabbing her with the knife in her neck,” he said. He later retracted his claim that Anisa was asleep when he killed her.
Continue reading...They stayed to fight the Taliban. Now the protesters are being hunted down
Women’s rights activists fear for their lives as Afghanistan’s new rulers infiltrate, detain, beat and torture groups of protesters
A month ago, Reshmin was busy organising protests against Taliban rule in online groups of hundreds of fellow women’s rights activists. Now the 26-year-old economics graduate must operate clandestinely, dressing in disguise and only demonstrating with a select few.
“If things continue like this, there will be no future for women in Afghanistan. It’s better if the future never arrives,” says Reshmin, who spoke to the Guardian using only her first name, which means “silk” in Farsi, out of security concerns. “Each time we go out, we say farewell because we might not make it back alive.”
Continue reading...UK police urged to end sexist ‘canteen culture’ to win back public trust
Head of Police Federation says forces have a behavioural problem that must be consigned to history
The head of the organisation representing police officers has said a “canteen culture” of sexism and misogyny in UK police forces has to end in order to win back public trust.
John Apter, the chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, acknowledged forces in the UK had a problem with behaviour where female officers are subjected to “sexist nicknames” and “derogatory remarks”, adding it needed to be “consigned to the history books”.
Continue reading...‘Disgraceful’: Italy’s senate votes down anti-homophobic violence bill
Bill would have made violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime
Italy’s senate has killed off a bill that would have made violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime.
The 315-member senate voted by 154 to 131 on Wednesday to block the debate on the law, named after the gay centre-left Democratic party (PD) legislator Alessandro Zan and previously approved by the lower house of parliament in the face of months of protests from far-right and Catholic groups.
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