Women being killed in my country: I am also scared as a man.
Writing this has been in my head for some days now, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spread such words of suffering, yet, I find it necessary.
I am a man, and I am scared.
This is the story of two women who have been killed in the past 6 months here in Colombia. This is the story of two, but there are way more…
The first case is the story of a 7 years old kid called Yuliana who was killed in December 4, 2016. This story has wounded the country for the past months, but such wound seems to not have been enough. Yuliana was kidnapped in front of her humble house by a rich man that took her in the morning in his car to his apartment and during the day rapped her and ended up killing her of suffocation. The killer relied on his brothers to let him get away with it, but the evidence was more than enough, he later ended up confessing. The body of the young girl was found in a horrible state, it had been washed with the purpose of eliminating every proof of the rape. The killer has been sentenced to 52 years of prison (because here the death penalty or life sentence doesn’t exist). You can read more about the case here (in Spanish): https://goo.gl/2LbsP4
The second case, the one that happened in April 10th of this year, is the story of a woman called “Claudia” who was killed in a shopping center, 10 minutes away from my home. This woman was pursued by a man (her ex-husband) all the way from her house to her job where he killed her inside of the place where she worked at. The killer had already been in jail in 2006 because of a double homicide but was set free because he argued having mental issues. The woman had put a restriction order against him but such thing was useless. She told the police that same day that she was being pursued, but the authorities did nothing. Both, the killer and the victim, ended up dead, leaving a kid without parents. You can read more about it here (in Spanish): https://goo.gl/HSfbou
As deeper I could go with these two cases, I don’t think that I can do it because it has been painful enough to watch all the news around them. And the worst part is that there are many more cases like these, and many of them are not even known or investigated.
But why does this keep happening?
The answer lies in many factors, such as education and citizen culture, but mostly on the lack of laws and authority that we have in Colombia. As I said before, here the death penalty or life sentence don’t exist, and our current laws have too many derivations and factors that a person who is sentenced can reduce the sentence to a few months if behaved correctly. A thief can be set free immediately because the procedure to capture such person wasn’t the proper one even when there is enough proof of the crime.
I have stated many times how ridiculous it is to live in a country like this, which as much as I love makes me afraid to even leave my house because I can be killed in the corner at any moment even if I am willing to give all of my belongings away. A place that makes me feel unsafe because there are a lot of people who went to jail and ended up spending little if any years in jail and are now free, people who even have mental issues which make them more prompt to commit a crime such as killing an innocent woman, rapping her… I fear for myself, but also for every single man and woman in this country. It is unbelievable that after all this time women are still victims of these crimes or any. And it scares me to think that my mother and sister are in danger as well.
This is definitely not the world I want to live in, but there’s little to nothing I can do here when the power is in the hands of the richest ones who don’t understand the issues and their only goal is to become richer. When corruption in our country is among the worst in the world.
