By Danilo Valladares (IPS)
"All the time I hit the head, pulled my hair, I was slapping and kicking. And I was wearing long sleeves to hide the beatings, including my wedding day had a bruise on his arm, "he told IPS Heidi Velasquez in Guatemala.
"So you spend one's days, weeks, months, years to understand the circle of violence that began with insults, then blows, then the honeymoon, the silence and later reactivated, "he said in describing the 12 years of living with her husband executioner.
Nevertheless, Velasquez, a 32 year old mother of two children, was lucky: he found the strength to seek help and to end their marriage and leave behind a family history where violence was the everyday.
In Guatemala, 14 million, just over half of them women, male violence has a chilling balance. Last year 46,000 reports of these abuses came to the judiciary, the judiciary órganodel up in the country.
But thousands of these victims have not survived into barbarism. In the decade 2000-2010 more than 5,200 women were killed as part of gender-based violence, most riddled with bullets, police said.
The figure surpasses the victims of Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city bordering the United States and known worldwide for the chain of femicide, gender causes killings that began in 1993 and in 2010 climbed to 306, according to figures officers.
Velasquez has survived the tragedy but has not been easy. Should undertake one of their children, five and nine years to attend psychological therapy and face a legal dispute with his former girlfriend, accused of misogyny, child abuse and other crimes.
"I do not regret taking this decision. Our economic situation is different but we do not eat and we love home. Now breathe another atmosphere without feeling afraid or belittled, "he said.
These struggles can lead to great risks, as happened to Mindy Rhodes, whose face was severely disfigured by her husband stabbed, Eswin Lopez, in July 2009.
Miraculously the 23-year-old mother of a five survived the attack and immediately began a legal battle for justice. Thus, while recovering in hospital Police managed to stop her attacker.
justice But hope was short-lived. Just days after Lopez was released by the judge. A letter forged with the withdrawal of the case was enough to regain their freedom. Rhodes
not give up and appealed for support to NGOs and authorities to investigate their case and through the national media and international calling for the fight against violence towards women. For this stripped his tormented face of the mask used to cover it.
Even in February 2010 he traveled to Mexico to start a treatment of facial reconstruction, even after fell into depression and returned to Guatemala.
December 18, Rhodes was found hanged and tortured in an area of \u200b\u200bthe capital, close to the body of another young woman.
The two made up the figure of 680 femicides in the country that year. The trial of the case begin on June 16 but Mindy, as is known by everyone in Guatemala, may not testify. Before the justice of his death. Ninety-eight percent of all crimes go unpunished, according to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.
"I was shocked when I heard that Mindy was dead. How sad that this can not be applied as law should be even when you have the evidence and physical attacks are obvious, "she said Velásquez not resist tears.
Norma Cruz, director of the Survivors Foundation NGO, told IPS that "women should report any assault to be investigated."
"While the offender remains at home, the chances of women being killed increases," said the activist, whose foundation supports the family of Rhodes and Velásquez.
The cost to denounce the offender is high because "many must leave their home, friends and family to avoid being found by their partners and also facing post-traumatic psychological damage, "admitted Cruz. Squeezed
economic, psychological and legal disputes are part of the challenges faced by victims, but "receiving support from family and friends," he added.
But not all violence is equal to or often faces the same way.
"My violence was not physical but psychological. It was very subtle but think it is normal and does it all for the children and not wanting change, "he told IPS Sarceño Telma, 52. "It normalizes the fact that a woman is under the command of someone, you have to do this because you are woman, who was born female and has to be and we must change these paradigms, "he said. To that end
Sarceño and seven other women victims of gender violence in 2010 mounted the play "The Mighty", in which they relive their stories to report this problem.
"At first I was afraid to show the public what I had passed. But as time goes by everything is more rewarding. Especially because the message coming to change lives, "said Sarceño, aware that his case is not the most egregious.
Fabiola Ortiz, director of the government's National Coordinator for the Prevention Domestic Violence and Violence against Women, told IPS that "10 years ago even thought that violence against women was a problem."
Although it is "very complex related to unequal power relations between men and women", the official believes that there has been progress.
"Today there is credibility of the existence of the problem, we have a law against femicide, institutions are creating mechanisms to address the issue and women are reporting it more," he explained.
Ortiz explained that his work goes beyond coordinating public policies to assist victims. Your institution promotes changes in the social imagination through information and education campaigns.
But he acknowledges it is a task whose results take time. Meanwhile, the media reported the first month of 2011 where the murders of women continue its relentless pace, there has been a daily violation in some districts and the victims and their families add to the list of those who do not find justice. (FIN/2011 )
Genocide
viciously
Susana Chiarotti, a lawyer in Argentina that is part of the Monitoring Committee of Experts of the Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, has complained to IPS that in America America "we are almost to a genocide, and also hidden."
"If you kill the same number of people being of an ethnic group or panel, for being black, Jewish or indigenous, people react differently. But are women and unfortunately fell sensitivity ", he said.
Gladys Acosta, chief Latin America United Nations Fund for Women, raised IPS that the international community must mobilize against an epidemic of gender-based killings in Guatemala, "which also, as exemplified by Mindy for Rojas, are marked by the cruelty.
"Dead with dozens of stab victims with dismembered bodies, is an atrocious brutality against women, "stressed the Peruvian specialist.
http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=97489
"All the time I hit the head, pulled my hair, I was slapping and kicking. And I was wearing long sleeves to hide the beatings, including my wedding day had a bruise on his arm, "he told IPS Heidi Velasquez in Guatemala.
"So you spend one's days, weeks, months, years to understand the circle of violence that began with insults, then blows, then the honeymoon, the silence and later reactivated, "he said in describing the 12 years of living with her husband executioner.
Nevertheless, Velasquez, a 32 year old mother of two children, was lucky: he found the strength to seek help and to end their marriage and leave behind a family history where violence was the everyday.
In Guatemala, 14 million, just over half of them women, male violence has a chilling balance. Last year 46,000 reports of these abuses came to the judiciary, the judiciary órganodel up in the country.
But thousands of these victims have not survived into barbarism. In the decade 2000-2010 more than 5,200 women were killed as part of gender-based violence, most riddled with bullets, police said.
The figure surpasses the victims of Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city bordering the United States and known worldwide for the chain of femicide, gender causes killings that began in 1993 and in 2010 climbed to 306, according to figures officers.
Velasquez has survived the tragedy but has not been easy. Should undertake one of their children, five and nine years to attend psychological therapy and face a legal dispute with his former girlfriend, accused of misogyny, child abuse and other crimes.
"I do not regret taking this decision. Our economic situation is different but we do not eat and we love home. Now breathe another atmosphere without feeling afraid or belittled, "he said.
These struggles can lead to great risks, as happened to Mindy Rhodes, whose face was severely disfigured by her husband stabbed, Eswin Lopez, in July 2009.
Miraculously the 23-year-old mother of a five survived the attack and immediately began a legal battle for justice. Thus, while recovering in hospital Police managed to stop her attacker.
justice But hope was short-lived. Just days after Lopez was released by the judge. A letter forged with the withdrawal of the case was enough to regain their freedom. Rhodes
not give up and appealed for support to NGOs and authorities to investigate their case and through the national media and international calling for the fight against violence towards women. For this stripped his tormented face of the mask used to cover it.
Even in February 2010 he traveled to Mexico to start a treatment of facial reconstruction, even after fell into depression and returned to Guatemala.
December 18, Rhodes was found hanged and tortured in an area of \u200b\u200bthe capital, close to the body of another young woman.
The two made up the figure of 680 femicides in the country that year. The trial of the case begin on June 16 but Mindy, as is known by everyone in Guatemala, may not testify. Before the justice of his death. Ninety-eight percent of all crimes go unpunished, according to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.
"I was shocked when I heard that Mindy was dead. How sad that this can not be applied as law should be even when you have the evidence and physical attacks are obvious, "she said Velásquez not resist tears.
Norma Cruz, director of the Survivors Foundation NGO, told IPS that "women should report any assault to be investigated."
"While the offender remains at home, the chances of women being killed increases," said the activist, whose foundation supports the family of Rhodes and Velásquez.
The cost to denounce the offender is high because "many must leave their home, friends and family to avoid being found by their partners and also facing post-traumatic psychological damage, "admitted Cruz. Squeezed
economic, psychological and legal disputes are part of the challenges faced by victims, but "receiving support from family and friends," he added.
But not all violence is equal to or often faces the same way.
"My violence was not physical but psychological. It was very subtle but think it is normal and does it all for the children and not wanting change, "he told IPS Sarceño Telma, 52. "It normalizes the fact that a woman is under the command of someone, you have to do this because you are woman, who was born female and has to be and we must change these paradigms, "he said. To that end
Sarceño and seven other women victims of gender violence in 2010 mounted the play "The Mighty", in which they relive their stories to report this problem.
"At first I was afraid to show the public what I had passed. But as time goes by everything is more rewarding. Especially because the message coming to change lives, "said Sarceño, aware that his case is not the most egregious.
Fabiola Ortiz, director of the government's National Coordinator for the Prevention Domestic Violence and Violence against Women, told IPS that "10 years ago even thought that violence against women was a problem."
Although it is "very complex related to unequal power relations between men and women", the official believes that there has been progress.
"Today there is credibility of the existence of the problem, we have a law against femicide, institutions are creating mechanisms to address the issue and women are reporting it more," he explained.
Ortiz explained that his work goes beyond coordinating public policies to assist victims. Your institution promotes changes in the social imagination through information and education campaigns.
But he acknowledges it is a task whose results take time. Meanwhile, the media reported the first month of 2011 where the murders of women continue its relentless pace, there has been a daily violation in some districts and the victims and their families add to the list of those who do not find justice. (FIN/2011 )
Genocide
viciously
Susana Chiarotti, a lawyer in Argentina that is part of the Monitoring Committee of Experts of the Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, has complained to IPS that in America America "we are almost to a genocide, and also hidden."
"If you kill the same number of people being of an ethnic group or panel, for being black, Jewish or indigenous, people react differently. But are women and unfortunately fell sensitivity ", he said.
Gladys Acosta, chief Latin America United Nations Fund for Women, raised IPS that the international community must mobilize against an epidemic of gender-based killings in Guatemala, "which also, as exemplified by Mindy for Rojas, are marked by the cruelty.
"Dead with dozens of stab victims with dismembered bodies, is an atrocious brutality against women, "stressed the Peruvian specialist.
http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=97489
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