Femicide crisis: Rage erupts as people protest in Argentina

Rage have been boiling in Argentina after the murder of an 18 year-old. Demonstrators mainly females demanding strong laws to protect the women from 'FEMICIDE'.

Demonstrators with banners stating the word "FEMICIDA" - female killer - shouts in big black letters under each name.

The posters, like the thousands that gathered in protest outside the Supreme Court of Argentina last week, are a measure of the anger that exists in the country over unbridled levels of violence against women.

It was the assassination of 18-year-old Ursula Bahillo that pushed the women's movement into the streets on February 17 in numbers not seen since Argentina's Congress legalized elective abortion in December. This time the mood was much gloomier.

Bahillo was killed on February 8 in her hometown of Rojas, in the province of Buenos Aires. Her ex-boyfriend, police officer Matias Ezequiel Martinez, is charged with murder, with aggravating factors of premeditated counsel and cruelty.

"We want to be able to walk the streets without having to look over our shoulders," said Fabiana Costa, a 26-year-old mother who lives in Quilmes, on the outskirts of the capital, and with a sign stands to call 'feminist judicial reform' outside the Supreme Court.

Lawyers say Bahillo's case was a bolt of lightning because it clearly shows how much the state is failing to protect women.

She filed several police charges against her ex-boyfriend and obtained a restraining order that was not enforced. The last time she went to authorities to lodge a complaint, she was told that they did not work on weekends and that she would have to return another day. The following Monday, the day her panic button would come, she was dead.

An autopsy reported that Bahillo was wounded 15 times in the back, thorax and neck with a paring knife found at the exhibition. Martinez, her ex-boyfriend, was located in the same country area anywhere her body was found, with a self-inflicted stab injury.

Since Bahillo's death, more examples of female deaths have been reported in Argentina. The body of Ivana Modica was discovered buried behind a hotel in the city of La Falda, in the region of Cordoba, after her ex-boyfriend admitted to the crime. Miriam Beatriz Farias, who was placed on fire in the city of Cordoba by her companion, also a police officer, died of her injuries.

Guadalupe Curual, 21, was stabbed to death in a busy street in the southern city of Villa La Angostura on Tuesday night, allegedly by a former boyfriend against whom she also received a restraint.

'The business is everywhere. "We all have an acquaintance, or someone we know, who has been through this and who is living it now, but the legal system does nothing about it," Costa said during the rally in Buenos Aires.

'You're going to file a complaint at the police station, and they're just looking at you. They record your complaint, and that's it. The restraining order never arrives. [Or] it comes after the person is already gone. We want to live."

The high violence against women sparked a new wave of activism for Argentina's feminist movement in 2015 after the body of 14-year-old Chiara Paez was found buried in the garden of her boyfriend's family. The pent-up outrage has lured hundreds of thousands of people to the streets under the banner of #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less).

The campaign seeks to destroy gender-based violence and has grown across several Latin American nations.

According to media monitoring organizations, nearly 300 murders of women were reported in the country by 2020. In the first 52 days of 2021, there were 43 murders and trans feminists, according to Mumala, a feminist organization that discusses the issues. Of these, 38 were direct victims and five children or other people related to the woman who was killed.