Large hundreds of people, most of them women, paraded this Monday, late afternoon, in Lisbon, to demand an end to gender-based violence, pointing out to the State and the justice system failures in the treatment and monitoring of victims.
Sílvia Roque, co-author of the book ‘Me Too, a very public secret”, participated this Monday in the demonstration in Lisbon, which left from Largo do Intendente towards Largo de São Domingos, carrying a poster that read, about the international movement with repercussions in Portugal, that “reporting is not a crime”.
The movement that “gave encouragement” for many people to come forward with complaints did not eliminate the fear of doing so, especially because victims feel unprotected to do so, he highlighted.
“People have to have a lot of courage and they have to be protected to be able to report it,” Sílvia Roque told Lusa.
However, “when complaints are made, people doubt the victims”, or the aggressors put victims in court for defamation, “trying to silence those who report”.
“Reporting cannot be a crime”, warned Sílvia Roque, mentioning the need for a more comprehensive criminalization of sexual harassment and a greater commitment to prevention.
For prevention, it is essential to invest in education, especially for children, argued Mahara Damasceno, from the Safo collective, a lesbian association that joined the organization of the March to End Violence Against Women.
The activist told Lusa that it is necessary to break the teaching of gender models that still intend to make men “the hunter” and women “the hunted”, highlighting that the exacerbated gender difference and violence lead “to the destruction of many lives “.
For Mahara Damasceno, holding the march continues to be justified as long as women suffer: “Our reality, historically, is pain.”
João Pedro Melão is not a newcomer to the 25th of November march. He told Lusa that since he is of legal age and lives in Lisbon, he always participates.
This year he was in the company of his girlfriend, but he has always participated feeling like “a man alone” in the feminist struggle.
In his own generation he still finds a lot of lack of interest and a lack of information on the subject, something he understands can also be explained with each person’s social and family context and the influence this has on shaping thought.
He said he has seen the growth of the march year after year on the street, but he has no doubts about society’s interest in the topic: “We are still very green on these issues.”
The rally scheduled for 6pm only turned into a march at 6:50pm, when hundreds of people came out to the sound of the usual female percussion collective and shouts of “Never mind, let it go, I’m a feminist and I’m going to change the world”.
LGBTI+ flags and many posters with slogans such as “We want to live, not survive” or “We want to get involved in violence against women” added color to the parade of hundreds of people who at the front, using the megaphone, was Dejanira Vidal, from organization of the march and the collective “For Todas Nós”.
Moments earlier, in statements to Lusa, he considered the numbers of femicides and gender-based violence in the country “worrying and absolutely frightening”, at a time when official data points to 25 women murdered this year alone.
Dejanira Vidal pointed the finger at the disinvestment in public policies and the absence of concrete measures that contribute to combating this reality, also calling on the Government, political parties and parliament to listen to feminist collectives and the concrete measures they have to propose.
The Observatory of Murdered Women (OMA) of the Union of Alternative and Response Women (UMAR) counted 25 women murdered in Portugal between the beginning of the year and November 15, of which 20 were femicides (homicides involving gender-based violence).
Among these 20 femicides, 16 were committed in intimate relationships, three in a non-intimate family context and one in a context of sexual violence, the OMA said last week.
According to data from the Judiciary Police released today, between January and September this year, 344 women were raped in Portugal.
Source: www.cmjornal.pt
