AREQUIPA, Peru – A Cuban man died after jumping from the roof of a building on Sancti Spíritus Boulevard, shocking those who were in the city center at noon on Tuesday.
According to statements to the official Sancti Spiritus Radio of Lieutenant Colonel Arnel Ulloa Valdés, second head of criminal investigation of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) in the territory, a complaint was filed against the citizen for alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl.
“We went to the area of the boulevard, specifically in the area of the buildings that are located above the optician’s, to work on a case of suicide resulting from an arrest operation that we went to carry out with a person accused of the crime of sexual assault, synonymous with rape, against a 16-year-old citizen who had gone on Sunday to file the corresponding complaint,” said Ulloa Valdés.
A report from the state newspaper Escambray He points out that the citizen was until then evading justice.
“We received information that he was hiding at home and we went to proceed with his arrest. When we got to the top floor we found him on the roof,” the lieutenant colonel explained.
From the moment they made contact with him, at a distance of more than 10 meters, he was on the edge of the building’s roof and after several actions to try to get him to give up his objective, he jumped into the void.
“Due to the injuries he received, he lost his life,” added Ulloa Valdés.
The MININT officer also explained that moments before the suicide, the alleged aggressor had threatened the complainant via cell phone.
According to the second head of Criminal Investigation in the province, the life of the young woman and her daughter was always protected.
The case of the Sancti Spiritus boulevard contrasts with the police inaction in many complaints related to gender-based violence in the country, a problem that has led to the death of dozens of women on the Island.
At the beginning of August, the island’s regime confirmed that a total of 110 women had been murdered at the hands of their partners or ex-partners throughout 2023. The figure, which was released by the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality (state-run), only includes those cases that were tried during the past year and in which the victim was over 15 years old.
According to the agency, EFEthe rate of femicides on the Island (even without being exhaustive) is the sixth highest in all of Latin America and the Caribbean compared to the records of sexist murders of the Gender Equality Observatory of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) of 2022.
Allegedly, the visibility of cases of gender-based violence in independent media and on social networks led the Government to propose an Interoperable Administrative Registry, “which allows for real-time information on the violent death of women and girls for reasons of gender”.
However, feminist organizations consider that this measure is insufficient and that the Government must take concrete actions to prevent and punish gender-based violence.
