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Guatemala Heeds the Cries of Femicide Victims
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Written By: Danilo Valladares/ipsnews
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Posted Date: 2/1/2012 9:01:34 AM
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The relentless wave of femicides in Guatemala, which has one
of the highest female murder rates in the world, has prompted
actions by the government, civil society groups, and two Nobel
Peace laureates to try to put a stop to this brutal violence
against women, which has reached horrific proportions.
According to information from the Presidential Commission against
Racism, 705 Guatemalan women lost their lives to gender-related
violence in 2011, most of them by gunfire, up from 675 deaths the
year before.
This alarming situation has spurred a range of reactions from both
civil society and the government.
On Jan. 24, only days after his inauguration as president, right-wing
retired general Otto Pérez Molina formed a "task force to combat
femicide", which is the term used in Guatemala to denote gender-
motivated killings. Women's organisations define femicide more
precisely as the phenomenon whereby women are murdered because they
are women.
This task force, created under the Interior Ministry, the body in
charge of domestic security, will be headed by former Prosecutor
Mirna Carrera and will focus on intelligence and investigative
efforts with the aim of preventing more women from being murdered.
"Femicide is being addressed as a matter of state policy, and a
message is being sent out to aggressors that their actions will not
be tolerated and that they will be punished," Mayra Sandoval, a
representative of the non-governmental Observatory against Femicide,
told IPS.
The activist acknowledged that the Pérez Molina administration -
which began its four-year term on Jan. 14 after winning the election
on the promise of taking a "firm hand" against crime - "is concerned
about violence in general."
But in the case of the femicide task force, "we need to examine
whether its members are qualified to handle a crime scene where the
victim is a woman," she said.
While Sandoval valued the government's reaction to these crimes, she
said "preventive efforts are also needed, otherwise, we'll just be
treating the symptoms without ever getting to the root of the
problem."
This Central American nation of 14 million inhabitants is considered
one of the countries with the highest rates of femicides in the
world, equalled only by Mexico. From 2000 to 2010, 5,200 women were
killed in Guatemala as a result of gender-related violence, according
to police |
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