On the 17th of February 18-year-old Ursula Bahillo was murdered in her hometown of Rojas, Buenos Aires, by her ex-boyfriend.
Ursula had filed several police complaints against her ex-boyfriend and obtained a restraining order against him, neither of which were enforced. She did everything she could think of to save herself but after pressing her panic button and being told that the police did not work at weekends, she was stabbed 15 times in the back, torso and neck with a butcher’s knife. Ursula’s ex-boyfriend, Officer Matias Ezequiel Martinez, has been charged with femicide with the aggravating factors of premeditation and cruelty.
Since Bahillo’s murder, more cases of femicide have been reported across Argentina, a 21-year-old was stabbed to death on a busy street in Villa La Angostura, by an ex-boyfriend she had obtained a restraining order against. Miriam Beatriz Farias was burned alive in Cordoba by her partner, also a police officer.
Femicide is the “intentional killing of women or girls because they are female” and it is shockingly under-policed, but since Ursula’s death, protesters have been flooding the streets of Buenos Aires. In fact, such crowds have not been seen in the country since the celebrations of legalisation of abortion in the country, but this more sombre scene is truly heart-breaking to see, as women march holding signs of their mothers, daughters and sisters with the word “FEMICIDA” underneath.
Written by Pippa Seager
Artwork by Zara Masood
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