Saint Dominic.- Feminist organizations Dominican women this Thursday showed their support “firmly and publicly” for the two women who denounced the singer Julio Iglesias for alleged work and sexual harassment, and they questioned Spain to investigate the accusation “with a gender, anti-racist and human rights perspective.”
The women, two former workers at the mansions of Churches in the Caribbeandenounce the Spanish singer for alleged workplace abuses, and attacks that include penetrations, non-consensual kisses and other sexual violence, which was revealed by the Spanish media elDiario.es and the American channel Univisión.
According to the complainants, who filed their accusation with the Prosecutor’s Office of the Spanish National Court, the events occurred in 2021 in the Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Spain.
The organizations demanded in a press release that they not “reproduce institutional violence or prioritize reputation, economic power or fame over women’s right to justice, comprehensive reparation and guarantees of non-repetition.”
Furthermore, they asked the spanish justice apply the “reinforced due diligence that corresponds in cases of violence against women”.
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They pointed out that complaints like this “destabilize an order that normalizes violence when it occurs in private spaces, in deeply unequal labor relations and under a domestic work regime designed for exploitation and lack of protection.”
A systemic problem, according to these associations
For these feminist organizations “the experiences reported by Rebeca and Laura cannot be understood as individual or isolated events – they are part of a system that turns domestic and care work into a territory of impunity, where women – mostly poor, racialized and migrants – are exposed to multiple forms of abuse without real guarantees of protection.”
That is why they consider that “believing survivors is a political position built from the historical experience of women and from the systematic evidence of how gender violence operates.”
These feminist organizations, grouped under the ‘Coalition for the Life and Rights of Women‘ and the ‘Magaly Pineda Feminist Forum’, indicated that “reporting is a collective action that strengthens the fight against gender violence.”
“Every time a woman reports, the margin of what is possible for others is expanded; the naturalization of abuse is questioned; institutions are questioned; and it is reaffirmed that violence is not a private problem, but a violation of human rights that requires structural responses.”
Likewise, according to these groups, this case also challenges the Dominican Republic and “a history marked by the feminization of migrationthe precariousness of domestic work and the lack of protection of women in transnational contexts”.
“As a Dominican feminist movement, we denounce a system that expels women, appropriates their work and then leaves them exposed to violence and impunity,” the organizations stated.
Faced with this situation, they ask the Dominican State to effectively comply with the implementation of Convention 189 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on Decent Work for “domestic workers, which establishes a minimum floor of rights and protection.”
Also, advance the ratification of ILO Convention 190 on the elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work.
“We reaffirm our commitment to the structural transformation of the domestic work regime and to the construction of a feminist justice that places the life, dignity and rights of women at the center.
We accompany Rebeca and Laura in their complaint, in their demand for justice and in their right to live free of violence,” conclude the two associations. Iglesias, in whose career he has sold more than 300 million records, has one of his mansions in the Caribbean in the paradisiacal town of Punta Cana (east of the Dominican Republic).
Although the Spanish singer has investments in the country and was granted Dominican nationality years ago, his presence has decreased considerably after the pandemic. Since then, only a few visits have been known, one of them in January 2024.
