Cuban independent platforms denounced this Thursday a new femicide which, if confirmed, would be the second reported in six days and the fifth so far this year in the country.
“We regret the femicide of Yamilka Silva, which occurred in the early hours of April 12, in a rural community of Báguanos, Holguín,” reported the group I do believe you in Cuba on Twitter.
According to the activists, who together with Alas Tensas collect data and community complaints about sexist crimes In the absence of an official public count, the victim’s partner went to attack her at her father’s house, where she was a refugee
Both platforms accused the Cuban State of not acting, protecting or creating “the essential mechanisms for women at risk of femicide.” In this way, they reiterate the urgency of creating “shelters and protection systems for women in situations of violence and their children”, because “families do not have the tools or security systems that shelter networks have”.
The last violent murder of a woman, presumably at the hands of her partner, reported by the activists had happened on April 8, when they mourned the death of a young woman also in eastern territory, this time in Las Tunas province.
Cuba: three femicides in the first weeks of 2022, activists denounce
The most recent report by Alas Tensas shows that at least 36 women died violently last year, allegedly at the hands of their partners, and another 32 had a similar fate in 2020.
For the moment, the official Cuban institutions have not responded to the request for information in this regard made by agencies such as the Spanish Ephwhile the official media on the island have not collected these facts.
The Cuban State recognizes gender violence in the new Constitution (2019), but does not classify femicide as a crime in the Penal Code.
Cuban law establishes that the crimes of injury, coercion or threat are not investigated by the authorities if there is no complaint from the victim or a guardian, in case of disability.
The Penal Code project and gender violence in Cuba (II and final)
The closest allusion to femicide appears in article 264.1, which recognizes as murder “the homicide produced between relatives or spouses of marriages formalized or not.”
The official statistics on sexist violence date from 2016 and show that 26.7% of women between the ages of 15 and 74 suffered some type of violence in their relationships, remember Eph.
Efe/OnCuba.
