11 boys and girls have been orphaned so far in 2022, according to Martha Flores of Catholics for the Right to Decide
By:Intertextual Writing
In Nicaragua, the belligerence in the investigation and capture of femicides is the constant demand, the majority of the cases of femicides remain in impunity, affirm feminist organizations, which denounce the increase in the most violent form of death of women for reasons of gender, in various parts of the Nicaraguan territory.
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In an interview with Yamileth Torrez of the Red De Mujeres del Norte, she stated that the data reflected in an annual report of the organizations, which also classify the cases as femicides, is inconsistent with the data provided by the police, which counts less, because “They don’t recognize some cases as femicide,” said the activist.
According to data obtained from femicides by the Observatory of Catholics for the Right to Decide, they have been registered in recent years. Since 2014, 75 femicides; in 2015 there were 53; in 2016, 49 were counted; in 2017, 51; in 2018, 57 cases were registered; In 2019, 63 women were murdered in, Nicaragua closed with 71 femicides in 2020. In 2021, it ended up registering 71 cases of femicides.
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This Saturday, February 19, 2022, Mrs. Rosa Emelia Mendoza Mejía, 39, became a fatal victim of sexist violence, the aggressor and femicide Elvin Ortega, 28 years old, deprived her of her life, using a firearm and shooting him in his face.
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According to the media in the area, they point out that the couple attended a celebration in the municipality of Siuna on the North Caribbean Coast and they later had an argument, which triggered the violent act.
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Mendoza Mejía’s death was instantaneous at the scene, leaving another victim, a 10-year-old boy who remains an orphan. The femicide fled while the police allegedly investigate her whereabouts to capture him.
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According to Sociologist Marice Mejía of the Women’s Network Against Violence, with the violent death of Rosa Emilia, so far in 2022, “there are 8 cases of femicide.”
The young Julie Gretchen Mendoza, the eldest daughter of the victim, posted on Facebook: “This is the person who took my mother’s life. Any information about him, if you see him, please let me know at number 86011782, please, friends, share so that more people see him and can help me.
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The cases of femicides are worrying, there is a normalization of violence in homes, which are sometimes more dangerous than the street because it is in those four walls where the worst enemy of women is, part of the violence that is experienced They are the threats, the psychological violence, the blows, the humiliations until reaching the fatal and irreparable, the femicide.
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Maritza, whom we will call at her request for her safety, lives with an aggressor, her husband is jealous of her, he does not allow her to dress “pretty, or put on makeup,” she tells Intertextual. She prefers not to go out, she is afraid. “He threatens me that he is going to take my children away from me, that’s why I put up with it. Here in Nicaragua, there is no real justice, and that is why I am afraid to leave it,” she adds, “for my two children, I put up with what I put up with.”
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Just like Maritza, there are many women in their homes who for some reason are silent about the sexist violence they suffer from their partners.
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Among the most common causes of femicide are jealousy, infidelity, abandonment, or the woman’s refusal to start or restart a love relationship.
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Femicide is a gender crime, carried out by aggressors whose intention is to dominate, exercise control, and deny the self-affirmation of women as subjects of rights through the use of violence. This violence is not limited to beatings, but we see in the national media subjects who stab, burn, poison, and even shoot their partners.
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Last year, 2021 closed with 71 cases of femicide in Nicaragua, according to data from the Observatory of Catholics for the Right to Decide, which keeps women’s rights organizations under extreme alert, as they assure that these figures only reveal the serious situation of violence that persists against women in the country.
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This year 2022, according to Martha Flores of the Catholic Observatory for the Right to Decide, “there are 8 femicides, 7 in Nicaragua and a Nicaraguan in Panama, originally from Rama.” She adds that of these tragedies “11 boys and girls have been orphaned so far this year.”
Flores emphasizes that the work they carry out is to make public the situation that women are experiencing and the consequences. “The objective of this monitoring is not to count numbers, but to put this public situation of what happens in the lives of women, in the lives of that suffering family and above all in that disaster that femicide leaves, for, For example, the orphaned children left by this violence.”
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The tragedy grows due to the lack of justice, the impunity in cases, the increase in Covid-19 that has forced women to stay at home more, and another cause “is the release of common criminals, including murderers rapists and femicides, among other criminals,” says Flores.
