Murders in Mexico City Put Defenders of Women's Rights on High Alert Nina Lakhani - The Guardian | |
go to original August 21, 2015 |
Women place portraits of the social activist Nadia Vera and Javier Duarte, the governor of Mexico’s Veracruz state, outside the apartment where she was murdered alongside (Anadolu Agency)
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Listen: Defenders of women's human rights around the world are facing systematic targeting. Liz Ford investigates
Nadia Vera believed in change. The 32-year-old social activist was a passionate defender of human rights through the arts. She wrote poems, staged dance workshops and theatre productions, and participated in street protests to demand political and social change.
Vera and four others were murdered in her apartment in Mexico City on 31 July in an attack that has put human rights defenders across the country on red alert.
She was raped, tortured and shot in the head alongside her friend and campaigning journalist Rubén Espinosa, 31. Both had fled the state of Veracruz following threats and intimidation, which they had publicly blamed on the state governor.
Three other women, all treated largely as an afterthought by local media and authorities, were also killed. Yesenia Quiroz, 18, a student makeup artist, and Mile Virginia Martín, 30, a Colombian hairdresser, were Vera’s flatmates; Alejandra Negrete, a 40-year-old mother of three, was cleaning the apartment at the time of the attack.
The killings have sparked a wave of protest and international outrage, focused largely on the escalating violence against journalists in Mexico, especially in Veracruz. WIth a total of 13 murders since 2011, Veracruz has become the most dangerous place in Latin American to be a journalist.
Read the rest at The Guardian
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