‘No more femicide’ – protesters demand justice and consequences

Moviment Graffitti together with a number of NGOs supporting women’s rights held a protest march on Friday evening in response to Malta’s third femicide this year.

Earlier this week, Bernice Cassar was shot dead by her estranged husband while driving to her workplace at the Corradino Industrial Estate.

The police have been heavily criticised for having not taken any action after Cassar filed another report against her husband just a day before her murder.

Protesters marched from the police headquarters in Floriana to Valletta, where the crowd stopped in front of Parliament before arriving at the law courts, where they shouted “No more femicide”, “We are tired and fed up” and “We will not be silenced”.

Angele Deguara, who was speaking on behalf of Moviment Graffiti, asked why the government and its authorities allowed another woman to be killed.

Deguara also raised the question of who would take responsibility for all the recent femicides.

Lawyer Lara Dimitrijevic, founder of the Women’s Rights Foundation, said the system has failed Bernice Cassar.

She asked “How many times must we take to the streets to call for change, for those in power to realise that we still have a problem?”

Friday 25 November also marks the ‘International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women’. UN Women has just kicked off its annual 16-day campaign against gender-based violence.

Activist Andrea Dibben said she is “furious” at the Maltese government’s 16-day campaign posters, which are urging people to “reach out”. Such slogans, she said, were useless if the authorities continued to fail to act.

The protest was attended by members of Bernice Cassar’s family, President Emeritus Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, Anne Marie Grech – the wife of Opposition leader Bernard Grech, and independent politician Arnold Cassola.