On June 9, the physique of an 11-year outdated woman was discovered exterior a small Greek city within the Peloponnese. She had been brutally killed with a screwdriver, resisting rape by her 37-year outdated uncle. In 2017 this identical man was convicted for the rape of one other minor woman and sentenced to jail in 2017 however by no means served, resulting from a stunningly gradual and inept court docket system that launched him on attraction till 2025.
This was not the primary, nor would it not be the final femicide to happen in Greece this 12 months, a rustic with the very best price of males killing girls in Europe.
On April 2, Kyriaki Grivam was stabbed repeatedly exterior the Athens police division the place she had gone to request safety towards an ex-boyfriend. A police assertion adopted, stating the sufferer visited the precinct to report her former boyfriend had been stalking her. This was not the primary time she had made such a report, and this time she requested a patrol automotive and officer to drive her residence. The officer reportedly advised her that “police vehicles usually are not a taxi service.’ Tragically, whereas making the decision, the ex-boyfriend approached her and stabbed her to dying.
The younger lady’s dying—she was solely 28 years outdated– triggered nationwide outrage, with many main feminist teams and politicians demanding femicide, (intentional killing with a gender-related motive), be codified into Greek regulation. Of their 2024 report titled “Trapped in Darkness,” the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting there is no such thing as a official file for femicide in Greece and the federal government insists there is no such thing as a motive to make femicide a criminal offense.
Within the days following Kyriaki’s homicide, girls and their supporters took to the streets of Athens to protest, some carrying indicators studying ‘a patrol automotive just isn’t a taxi.” Kyriaki’s father claimed that police refused to fulfill with him, and that he was by no means formally knowledgeable of her homicide by police, he realized about it from a journalist. Days later, the 39-year outdated man who was arrested for the homicide was taken to a jail psychiatric ward because the investigation continues.
A girl protests femicide, with an indication studying ‘ We aren’t all right here, the nurdered are lacking’ (Anna Pantelia for Al Jazeera)
Within the case of the Pyrgos sufferer, the Greek Supreme Court docket is now investigating the three feminine judges and prosecutor who allowed her assassin to stroll free seven years prior. On June 11, an offended crowd exterior the courtroom, together with members of the woman’s household tried to tug the person from the police automotive, threatening to ’lynch’ him.
Whereas femicide as a definite felony act has been integrated into the regulation in lots of international locations, in Greece the time period has not but been legally acknowledged. This type of “epidemic” of murders of ladies by their present or former companions appears to have intensified because the Covid pandemic. An eerily comparable case to final week’s tragedy occurred on the island of Zakynthos in 2022, when a married lady sought police safety towards her husband after being brutally overwhelmed. She returned residence, was overwhelmed and killed.
A complete 2023 report carried out by European Information Journalism Community with the participation of newsrooms throughout Europe revealed that Greece had the very best enhance in femicides in 2021 with a rise of a staggering 187.5% from 8 incidents in 2020 to 23 in 2021. However throughout the area, in Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Germany, femicides are on the rise, fueling the demand from girls and lawmakers to acknowledge femicide as a criminal offense in its personal proper. Up to now solely three European states, Slovakia, Cyprus, and Malta have ventured to take this step, though Croatia has launched laws. However there may be additionally an alarming lack of information. In line with the report, no official information has been printed at a European Union degree for the interval after 2018, and the findings of a survey began in 2020 by the European Institute for Gender Fairness are nonetheless not printed.
The time period ‘femicide’ was first launched by Diana Russell whereas testifying in 1976 earlier than the Worldwide Tribunal on Crimes Towards Girls. She outlined femicide as ‘the murders of ladies by males motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure or a way of possession of ladies.’ The significance of the time period femicide is linked to the political want to acknowledge that is taking place and examine the sociocultural causes behind the killing of ladies. However since Russell’s definition, a lot debate has developed, urging lawmakers to transcend gender-related motives to the broader patriarchal and violent constructions of society, a wider vary of cases the place femicide happens, reminiscent of throughout conflict.
Anna Vouyioukas, a social scientist, gender equality professional and advocacy officer at Diotima, a middle for analysis on gender rights and equality in Greece, advised Al Jazeera’s Katy Fallon that it was “apparent that femicides could also be the results of institutional violence because the state doesn’t present ensures to girls, and doesn’t create circumstances of security in the neighborhood, at residence, at work, within the public area and never even within the shut neighborhood of a police station”.
In Greece there is no such thing as a particular regulation for the felony prosecution of the act of femicide, and so the phenomenon is monitored within the nation by the gathering of information concerning the feminine victims of intentional murder, whereas the connection with the perpetrator is generated together with the regulation for the dealing with of home violence. For the EDJNet report, information in Greece was collected by the Normal Secretariat for Gender Equality, which in flip collected information from the Hellenic Police and the Ministry of Justice. However these experiences usually don’t match unbiased experiences carried out by NGO’s and violence-monitoring teams, in keeping with Professor Athena Pegglidou, who based the European Observatory on Femicide. For 2020 and 2021, the non-official variety of femicides recorded by the Greek part of the European Observatory on Femicide was increased in Greece than the official quantity by 2.1 instances in 2020 (19 vs. 9 victims), 1.34 instances in 2021 (31 vs. 23) and 1 in 2022 (25 vs. 24).
Curiously, Greece additionally topped the listing of European international locations when it got here to information on psychological gender-based violence, seeing a rise of 108.4% from 2021 to 2020, and 28% enhance in 2022. Furthermore, as revealed by the investigation, there’s a exceptional Europe-wide enhance within the attraction for assist from victims of home violence or third events to nationwide assist traces, such because the “SOS 15900 Line” in Greece. Nonetheless, in 2023 in Greece, not like different international locations, a lower (-21.62%) was noticed (-21.62%), with out understanding whether or not that is associated to fewer incidents of violence or an inclination to keep away from calling for assistance on the a part of girls.
Worldwide, it’s no shock that any type of violence towards girls is under-reported and under-recorded. What legal guidelines do exist are oftentimes not enforced. Jane Louloudi, a journalist on the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting cites the Greek circumstances of murders of ladies who had already filed restraining orders towards their companions. “It’s not nearly creating new legal guidelines,” she emphasised, “it’s about imposing those that exist already.”
There may be some flickering gentle within the darkness. On February 6, a provisional settlement was lastly reached between the European Parliament and Council on EU-wide guidelines to fight gender-based violence and shield its victims, particularly girls and victims of home violence. It consists of criminalization of sure types of GBV, harder guidelines on cyber violence, higher entry to justice, safety and prevention, in addition to establishing enhanced reporting and proof gathering by authorities. In Greece a current invoice of the Ministry of Justice on combatting home violence towards girls was voted in parliament with speedy procedures, specializing in the tightening of penalties for home violence. In line with the MIIR report although, there may be additionally no provision within the new regulation for rushing up procedures and to prioritize trials for home violence incidents, though since November 2021, a important paper circulated by the Supreme Court docket prosecutor, Vasilis Pliotas, known as on prosecutors to intervene imminently, to additional the method of arresting the accused perpetrators of such crimes and for the associated felony circumstances to be heard as a matter of precedence in court docket, in order to keep away from all delays in delivering justice. The truth is, the paper explicitly talked about the time period “femicide” – the primary time a senior prosecutor had made an argument for the authorized adoption of the time period in Greece – and in addition known as for victims of home violence to be supported when reporting violent habits towards them.
Whereas Greek and European girls cope with the specter of a right-wing surge in Europe, these measures are important in establishing protocols for progress, however they’re removed from sufficient. This concern in regards to the altering political and social surroundings in Europe in relation to the rise in violence towards girls can be expressed by Cristina Fabre Rosell, EIGE’s Gender-based Violence Workforce Chief, who advised MIIR that “Three years after the Covid pandemic we don’t know if it’s nonetheless due to it, or as a result of excessive types of violence towards girls have elevated resulting from totally different causes which can be additionally associated to the rise of the far proper actions and the anti-gender narrative.”
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