14ymedio, Havana, 5 March 2023 — The authorities of Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, confirmed this Saturday the arrest in the municipality of Taguasco of Liván Reinaldo Mora Pérez ’El lento’, who is accused of stabbing Vanelis Macola to death on February 28 in the town of Tuinicu.
According to information offered by the Head of the Criminal Investigation Body of the Ministry of the Interior to the official newspaper Escambray, Mora Pérez has “multiple criminal priors for the crimes of threat, injury, theft, rape and robbery with force, among others.”
It is confirmed that Mora Pérez had a relationship with the victim, who worked as a nurse in the Nieves Morejón provincial prison and left an orphaned son.
The increase in femicides on the Island with a total already for 2023 of 16, “is alarming, worrying and hopeless,” said the independent feminist platform Alas Tensas. This is even more alarming because of “the immobility of the Cuban authorities.”
According to the records of the Alas Tensas Obervatory, so far a total of 32 cases were verified in 2020, followed by 36 femicides in 2021 and another 36 in 2022.
“Faced with the State’s denial of the problem, we continue to bet on the citizen response for the prevention of gender violence, specifically femicides,” said the Yo Sí Te Creo [Yes I Believe You] platform in Cuba. “This is a problem of the whole society and so we must face it.”
The demand of independent organizations and media raised the voice. Alas Tensas and its Gender Observatory have demanded that the Cuban government “declare a State of Emergency due to the growing escalation of sexist intimidation,” but so far these efforts have been unsuccessful.
Last February, the Gender Observatory denounced the lack of interest in the issue and showed that initiatives such as the Women’s Advancement Program and the Strategy have remained only as promises. “The promised Gender Violence Observatory has not yet arrived, and the [gender violence reporting phone] Line 103 has not been active for a year,” it said in a statement. “They are killing us because we lack effective protocols and prevention mechanisms in Cuba.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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