Honduran police turn a blind eye to soaring number of 'femicides'

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Honduran police turn a blind eye to soaring number of 'femicides'
Women are being murdered at the rate of one a day, yet a report by Oxfam accuses the police of 'systematic indifference'
Annie Kelly in Tegucigalpa
The Observer, Sunday 29 May 2011

According to those who loved her, Grace González was a hard-working, happy woman who liked to laugh too loudly and dress too brightly. Her enchiladas, she declared, were the best in the barrio. Last month, neighbours watched in silence as her bloodstained body was wheeled out of the front door of the small house she shared with her two daughters on the outskirts of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

Hours earlier, a man had come into her house and tried to rape her 15-year-old daughter, Rosa. When Grace tried to protect her child, he held her down and slit her throat. Almost a month after she buried her mother, Rosa says she doesn't expect justice. What she does expect is for her mother's murderer to come back and kill her too.

"I told the police that I knew the man and saw him kill my mother, but since then they have done nothing. There is no investigation. They tell me that he has left Honduras but I don't believe them," she says.

~snip~
"Since the coup in July 2009, we've seen a sharp rise in gender-based killings, with many of these crimes simply going unreported," says Maritza Gallardo of Oxfam Honduras. "We don't even really know just how many women are being killed because families of victims are afraid to report violence and murders because they realise the legal system gives impunity to those responsible for the killings."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/honduras-blind-eye-femicides

[ClarkUSA]

1. All women need to learn self-defense. In this case, practice knife-fighting.

Women, when properly trained, are deadly.

[Judi Lynn]

2. You don't imagine the Honduran women have already tried to defend themselves?

They have a death wish? They're waiting for the fascist Honduran coup government to save them?

It may be a little more difficult to solve than sponsoring these poor peoples' lessons in self-defense classes.

[ClarkUSA]

3. I don't know. You tell me. BTW, the former prez just returned to power.

There's a big difference between practicing self-defense everyday and defending oneself on the spur of the moment.

[joshcryer]

4. Huh? No he didn't. And his return will have little effect on the crime there.

Crime is directly proportional to living standard, across the board. With Honduras being thrown under the bus by most of the international community it was inevitable.