“Terrible”, is how Lety Tordoya, a lawyer for Mujeres Creando, defines the reality of sexual harassment in the country, when the complaints reach the courts.
He gave as an example that until today he is handling the case of a policewoman, who denounced the commander of the unit, and who has been a pilgrim since 2015. “The commander could not be tried within the Police disciplinary law, which is 101. Reporting sexual harassment is very difficult,” she lamented.
He confessed that, as a group, they do not believe much in the number of sentences, despite the fact that they handle these types of cases.
“We know that there are very few in the country, I think there have been no more than ten since the promulgation of Law 348, in 2013,” he said.
According to Tordoya, there are scenarios where this figure occurs more recurrently, one of them is the public university, it also occurs in the Bolivian Police, and he says that in political parties, regardless of their colors.
“The worst thing about bullying is that it is normalized, here it happens more at certain ages, which luckily are not the youngest, but over 40 years of age, as something often hidden in the Santa Cruz identity, in loose words, made up, but that end up being harassment,” he explained.
As for the public university, he regretted the degree of tolerance with this problem, which has many victims, a lot of impunity, and also lacks a protocol to deal with these situations.
Jenny Ampuero, a professor at the Faculty of Humanities, said that a diagnosis was made with the Sociology major, and that the most important fact is that 83% of the Humanities students know, have seen, or have been the victim of bullying .
Tordoya added that even in areas surrounding the UAGRM, there are individuals who masturbate where groups of girls pass by.
According to the lawyer for Mujeres Creando, men also suffer harassment, but with a different nuance. She says they are pressured to pay for parties, bring alcohol and girls.
He also reported that in Medicine, the new students receive information from the old ones, about who they are harassing, and the only measure they manage is to launch the subjects with those professors.
March
Self-convened women from different groups will take to the streets today to commemorate International Women’s Day in the capital of Santa Cruz. The march will depart at 5:30 p.m. from the Plaza del Estudiante, heading to the Plaza 24 de Septiembre.
Yam Medrano Cayalo, president of the platform to Fight Violence, recalled that Bolivia currently registers high numbers of femicides, harassment, and sexual violence against women, adolescents, and girls.
According to a report from the Ministry of Labor, the figures for workplace and sexual harassment rose from 315 to 473 between 2021 and 2022, while 7,192 – out of 16,600 labor complaints. Of the 473 complaints, 203 ended in summons.
