Efforts to end violence against women grow in Peru.
| Autor | Jana, Elsa Chanduvi |
Violence against women in Peru, a country ranking second in Latin America for the number of incidents of sexual violence with 10 femicides a month, has been given a central spot on the public agenda (NotiSur March 1, 2013; SourceMex, May 11, 2016; and NotiCen, Feb.28, 2013).
Credit goes to "Ni Una Menos" (Not One Less), a civic movement rising to reject two recent judicial decisions that gave suspended sentences to two men who violently threatened their partners. The entire country saw a 2015 video on national television that showed how a naked Adriano Pozo dragged Arlette Contreras by her hair through a hostel reception area in Ayacucho. Considering this an aggressive act that resulted in only light wounds, judges recently gave Pozo a one-year suspended sentence. In 2012, Ronny Garcia beat his former girlfriend, Lady Guillen, to the point of disfigurement; he received a four-year prison sentence that was also suspended.
These cases offended many Peruvians, women and men, and a social media page called Ni Una Menos was created, calling for a march with the same name on Aug. 13. Immediately, hundreds of women began to post harrowing testimonies on the page. Each testimony encouraged others to break their silence about acts that have long occurred in Peru's patriarchal, machista society. (The movement echoes similar civic action taken under the slogan Ni Una Menos in Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil in the last 12 months.)
"Violence against women in Peru is a structural, epidemic problem that tragically is the norm," Ni Una Menos spokesperson Jimena Ledgard wrote in a column published Aug. 11 in La Republica. "In the last few weeks, Ni Una Menos, a march that civil society spontaneously and simultaneously created in various locations, has been able to bring the matter of violence against women to the center of the national debate."
In their testimonies, women said they had been victims of beatings, sexual abuse, rape, and murder attempts, indicating, in most cases, that they had not received justice when they denounced such aggressions. The impunity enjoyed by the aggressors constitutes a very serious situation if one considers, according to information from the country's human rights ombudsman, that most victims of femicide in recent years had, before they were killed, reported they were victims of abuse and had not received any help from authorities.
The public vigorously repudiated and criticized radio statements made by...
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