For award-winning journalist Soledad Jarquín, the fight for justice following her daughter’s death is all-consuming.
“Every day that goes by, it’s like I see a wall in front of me that grows and grows while I try to climb it, never reaching the top,” she says. “It’s the reflection of that feeling of impotence that comes from the mixture of impunity from my daughter’s femicide, combined with the intense pain of having lost her forever. It’s all so intense that it affects the day-to-day life of my entire family.”
María del Sol Cruz Jarquín, a photographer, was shot in Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, on June 2, 2018. It took until October 2021 for her death to be classified as a femicide instead of a homicide. Still, Jarquín says she has heard nothing from authorities about her daughter’s case.
A quarter of the 4,002 homicides involving women in Mexico were classified as femicides in 2021. Femicide is defined as the murder of a girl or woman for gender-based reasons, which is determined by certain criteria, such as evidence of sexual violence prior to the person’s death or a trusting relationship with the perpetrator. Despite an alarming rise in femicides, campaigners say too many cases are not deemed femicide from the start, which means losing the opportunity for important investigation procedures. Many homicides of women are classified as culpable homicide, which can imply an accident, letting the state off the hook for forming public policies to prevent gender-based violence.
Like many relatives of those who have died by femicide, Jarquín says, she has had to push authorities to investigate her daughter’s death. Last summer, driven by the lack of action, she took her case to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in Geneva. It was the committee’s first femicide case from Oaxaca.
Source : Globalpressjournal