~ This article was originally published on September 11, 2015 ~
Social organizations requested that a Gender Alert be issued for the state of Veracruz by the Executive Secretariat of the National System to Prevent, Address, Punish, and Eradicate Violence Against Women, owing to the situation of violent femicides. In 2014 there were 74 femicides and 38 municipalities of the state recorded at least one, which represents a little more than 18% of the territory of the Veracruz.
To support the petition, they indicated that on September 28, 2011, when requested by the Special Legislative Comission responsible for exhaustively tracking the official responses to cases of femicide in Mexico, the then director of the state Attorney General’s Office, Reynaldo Escobar Pérez, reported that from 2000 to 2010 there were 728 investigations begun into the probable crime of intentional homicide of women. That is to say, an average of 73 of Veracruz’s women were killed every year over the course of that decade.
From 2011 to 2013, according to statistics from civil society organizations, there were an average of eight femicides a month in the state. In 2012, 95 women in Veracruz were victims of femicide, and in 2013 ninety-two women lost their lives at the hands of aggressors.
In a report presented by the Veracruz Institute for Women (IVM), according to the reports filed in the state database, during 2014 there were 24 femicides, and one case of violence against women in 21 of the 212 municipalities in the state.
Nevertheless, reports in local media are strikingly different with the reports in the database. According to the project “Violence against women and girls: Monitoring the media outlets in Veracruz,” undertaken by the Center for Gender Studies of the University of Veracruz (UV), during 2014 there were 74 femicides.
The members of the social organizations indicated in their presentation on the situation of violence that the 38 municipalities where there are reported femicides are: Tierra Blanca (6 cases); Veracruz (6 cases), Coatzacoalcos and Cordoba (5 each); Xalapa (4 cases); Ciudad Isla; Juchique de Ferrer; Nanchital; Poza Rica; and Zongolica, all with three cases each.
Ixhuatlán de Madero, Las Choapas, Orizaba and Tuxpan registered two cases each, while the municipalities of Acultzinfo, Amatlán, Atoyac, Coatzintla, Cosamaloapan, Cuitlahuac, Fiolmeno Mata, Hueyapan de Ocampo, Ixhuatlancillo, Ixtaczoquitlán, Jáltipan, Medellín, Nogales, Ozuluama de Mascareñas, Papantla, San Juan Evangelista, Tezonapa, Tres Valles, Zozocolco, Altotonga, Cazones de Herrera, Minatitlán, Coatepec, Pueblo Viejo registered at least one case each.
Because of this, Moserrat Díaz and Aracely González Saavedra specified that the fundamental objective of the request is to guarantee the security of women, to stop the violence against them, to eliminate the inequalities, and to eradicate gender-based violence in the entire state, in accordance with the Title II, Chapter V of the General Law of Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence.
The organizations that have requested the alert are: Agrupación de Derechos Humanos Xochitépetl, Asesoría y Servicios Rurales, Buscamos a nuestras hijas, Colectivo Akelarre, Colectivo Feminista de Xalapa, Equifonía Colectivo por la Ciudadanía, Autonomía y Libertad de las Mujeres, Integración, Lucha y Transformación, Kalli Luz Marina, Red Unidos por los Derechos Humanos, Salud y Género.
They added that 19 percent of the victims knew their aggressor and that the aggressor was someone close to them; in 4 percent of the cases the victim had a school or professional link with their attacker; in 21 percent of the cases there was evidence of sexual violence; in 19 percent there was evidence of wounds or mutilation occurring either before or after death.
[fruitful_sep]This article was published by La Jornada de Veracruz on September 11, 2015 under the title “Por número de feminicidios, exigen emitir alerta de género en Veracruz” and is available at: http://www.jornadaveracruz.com.mx/por-numero-de-feminicidios-exigen-emitir-alerta-de-genero-en-veracruz/
Translation by Michael Lettieri, Trans-Border Institute
