Omicidi

‘Storie spaziali per maschi del futuro’ è il nome del progetto volto a proporre nuovi modelli contro gli stereotipi che in 250 scuole elementari si prefigge di contrastare la violenza di genere e far comprendere fin da bambini l’importanza del consenso nelle relazioni sociali, così da accompagnare i futuri ragazzi e adulti in un percorso di accettazione delle proprie fragilità e di gestione di emozioni come la rabbia e la tristezza. Guidato da fondazione Libellula con l’autrice Francesca Cavallo e ScuolAttiva Onlus, il progetto è stato presentato alla Camera alla presenza di parlamentari del Pd (Filippo Sensi), M5s (Stefania Ascari) e Avs (Francesca Ghirra): da marzo porterà fiabe, formazione docenti e strumenti educativi in 250 scuole su tutto il territorio nazionale (il 60% delle quali nelle periferie delle nostre città) coinvolgendo migliaia di bambini, insegnanti e famiglie per promuovere “modelli maschili più liberi, empatici e inclusivi”.

Il nome dato al progetto rimanda al libro scritto da Cavallo, “Storie spaziali per Maschi del Futuro”, una raccolta di fiabe che affronta gli stereotipi di genere che “danneggiano non solo le bambine, ma anche i bambini maschi, mettendo in discussione modelli tradizionali di maschilità legati al principe azzurro al supereroe – si spiega -. Attraverso la narrazione il libro apre spazi nuovi per immaginare un maschile capace di fragilità, ascolto ed empatia”.

Al 30 settembre scorso, secondo l’Osservatorio permanente sui delitti di genere pubblicato sul sito di ‘Non una di meno’, in Italia risultavano «70 femminicidi, 3 suicidi indotti di donne, 1 suicidio indotto di un ragazzo trans, 1 suicidio indotto di una persona non binaria, 1 suicidio indotto di un ragazzo, 6 casi in fase di accertamento. Inoltre, ci sono stati almeno altri 62 tentati femminicidi riportati nelle cronache on line di media nazionali e locali e almeno due ragazzi uccisi dal padre». «Tra le persone uccise – si legge sul sito -, la vittima più giovane aveva 1 anno, la più anziana 93. Le vittime hanno un’età media di 55 anni. Si contano 12 casi con denunce o segnalazioni per violenza, stalking, persecuzione nei mesi precedenti. Due persone uccise erano sex worker, 13 persone uccise avevano una disabilità o una malattia grave, spesso cronica o degenerativa, 10 i casi in cui gli minori hanno assistito al femminicidio, 54 gli minori sono rimasti orfani in seguito al femminicidio della madre».

Il report ha analizzato anche l’identità degli assassini e le modalità delle aggressioni: «Nei 70 casi accertati di omicidio, il colpevole o presunto tale ha un’età media di 51 anni. Il più giovane aveva 19 anni al momento del delitto, il più anziano 91. Ventidue uomini colpevoli si sono suicidati subito dopo aver compiuto l’omicidio. Ciò significa che non sarà possibile procedere per via giudiziaria e dunque attestare la gravità del gesto e le motivazioni di genere e patriarcali della violenza espressa. Altri 6 uomini colpevoli hanno tentato di togliersi la vita». «Nella quasi totalità dei casi – si legge ancora -, l’assassino era conosciuto dalla persona uccisa. Nel 50 per cento dei casi l’assassino era il marito, il partner, il convivente (35 casi). In 13 casi, a compiere il gesto è stato l’ex partner da cui la persona uccisa si era separata o aveva espresso l’intenzione di separarsi. In 11 casi, l’omicida è il figlio. Negli altri casi la relazione con la vittima era: amico, nipote, cliente, o conoscente». E ancora: «Dei 70 casi accertati di omicidio, 21 sono morte per accoltellamento, e 12 per i colpi di arma da fuoco. Altre cause del decesso sono soffocamento o strangolamento (16), percosse, colpi di forbici, colpi d’ascia, caduta dalla finestra».

The bodies of eight Colombian religious and social leaders who had been reported missing in April have been found in a shallow grave in Guaviare province, in south-central Colombia.

The prosecutor’s office blamed members of a rebel group called Frente Armando Ríos for their killing.

Officials said the eight – two women and six men – had been summoned by the rebels to be interrogated about the alleged formation of a rival armed group in the area.

There has been no response from Frente Armando Ríos to the accusations.

Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for rights defenders and social leaders, according to a report by international rights organisation Front Line Defenders.

The bodies were found in a rural area known as Calamar, where members of the Frente Armando Ríos are active.

The group is an off-shoot of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The Farc signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016 and many of its members laid down their arms, but parts of the group refused to disarm and set up dissident rebel groups such as the Frente Armando Ríos.

These offshoots engage in the production and trafficking of cocaine as well as extortion and illegal mining.

They also engage in armed confrontations with the security forces and with members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) – a rival guerrilla group.

According to the statement released by the prosecutor’s office, leaders of the Frente Armando Ríos feared that the ELN was setting up a local cell in the area.

They reportedly summoned two of the victims for an “interrogation” on 4 April, and the remaining six people three days later.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a human rights organisation specialising in freedom of religion, said all but one were active leaders and members from two Protestant denominations: the Evangelical Alliance of Colombia Denomination (DEAC) and the Foursquare Gospel Church (ICCG). The eighth was the uncle of two of the other victims.

Among them is a married couple – Isaíd Gómez and Maribel Silva – who often preached in their Protestant church.

Also among those whose bodies have been found is Maryuri Hernández, who helped the evangelical pastor in the area. She is survived by her five-year-old daughter.

According to CSW, all eight had settled in the area after fleeing violence and violations of freedom of religion in Arauca, a province bordering Venezuela where several armed groups are active.

Religious leaders and social leaders are often targeted by armed groups in Colombia which do not tolerate any other authority than their own.

Relatives of the victims said the eight had received a message by the Frente Armando Ríos, which demanded that they present themselves for questioning.

According to the investigation by the prosecutor’s office, days later they were taken to an abandoned property, where they were killed.

Officials suspect the order to kill them was given by the inner circle of Iván Mordisco, one of the most powerful commanders of the dissident rebel factions.

The murder of the eight has been condemned by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who called it “heinous” and denounced it as “a grave attack on the right to life, religious freedom and spiritual and community work”.

La efferata, terribile uccisione di una bambina di pochi mesi, trovata nel parco di Villa Panfili a Roma a pochi metri dal corpo della madre, assume sempre più gli aspetti di un giallo internazionale.

Come tutti speriamo che l’uomo, dalla doppia identità, arrestato in Grecia possa essere estradato in Italia e che si possa fare luce sulle tragiche vicende che hanno portato la bambina a subire una morte atroce dopo essere stata prima affamata e picchiata.

Rimangono ancora senza risposta anche le motivazioni che, a fronte di più controlli, effettuati in giorni diversi anche a seguito di segnalazioni da parte della polizia italiana, non si siano fatti adeguati accertamenti e non si sia portato l’uomo, più volte trovato in stato di ebrezza e in situazioni violente, in una stazione di Polizia o dei Carabinieri visto che la donna, da lui definita sua moglie, non aveva documenti e che la bambina è stata più volte vista piangere e non essere in condizione idonea per una bimba di pochi mesi.

Un passaporto americano è sufficiente a passare sopra a comportamenti gravi che avrebbero fatto scattare invece seri provvedimenti se si fosse trattato di persona di diversa nazionalità?

Controlli appropriati avrebbero molto probabilmente evitato almeno la morte della bambina.

The Colombian government says 15 police officers and 12 soldiers have been killed over the past two weeks in targeted attacks it blames on armed groups.

President Gustavo Petro accused the Gulf Clan criminal gang and other armed groups of targeting members of the security forces in revenge for the recent killing of several of their leaders.

The government has offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of those behind the attacks.

Petro was elected on a promise to bring “total peace” to Colombia, but on Friday his interior minister acknowledged that the strategy was “not going well”, following the breakdown of talks with the Gulf Clan and several other armed groups.

Petro published a list on X of the names of the 15 police officers and 12 soldiers which he said had been “systematically” killed since 15 April.

According to the list, 10 of the police officers were murdered on duty, while five were killed off duty.

Seven of the soldiers on the list all died in a single ambush on Sunday in Guaviare province. The army has blamed that attack on a dissident Farc rebel group.

The Farc, short for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, signed a peace deal with the government in 2016 and most of its fighters laid down their arms.

But a considerable number of Farc rebels who did not agree with the deal formed dissident groups which have continued to fight the security forces.

In an effort to bring peace to Colombia, Petro’s government held talks with some of these dissident groups, as well as with rebels of the National Liberation Army (ELN), and members of the Gulf Clan criminal gang.

But Petro suspended the talks with the ELN in January, accusing it of having “no will for peace”.

He also opted not to renew a ceasefire with a dissident Farc rebel group in April.

Talks with the Gulf Clan also stalled after police launched an operation against the group’s leader, known as “Chiquito Malo” (Spanish for “Bad Shorty”), in February.

Chiquito Malo escaped unharmed, but days later another senior leader, known as “Terror”, and his bodyguards were killed by police.

The Colombian government says that the Gulf Clan ordered its members to kill on- and off-duty police officers and soldiers in revenge for these operations.

The death toll from attacks by a rebel group in Colombia’s Catatumbo region has risen to 60, the country’s human rights office has said.

Rival factions have been vying for control of the cocaine trade in the region – which sits near the border with Venezuela – for years.

The Ombudsman’s Office said the latest violence involved the National Liberation Army (ELN) – the largest armed group still active in Colombia – and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which signed a peace treaty with the state in 2016.

The attacks broke an uneasy truce between the guerrilla groups, which had been in peace negotiations with the government.

The Ombudsman’s Office, a government agency that oversees the protection of citizens’ human and civil rights, previously reported that 40 had died in the violence.

It said that many people, including community leaders and their families, were facing a “special risk” of being kidnapped or killed at the hands of the ELN. It noted that 20 people had recently been kidnapped, half of whom were women.

The office said that among those killed were seven peace treaty signatories and Carmelo Guerrero, the leader of the Association for Peasant Unity in Catatumbo (Asuncat), a local advocacy group.

Asuncat wrote on social media on Friday that Roger Quintero and Freiman Velasquez, members of its board of directors, had not been seen since the previous day, and that it suspected armed groups had taken them.

“In some communities in the region, food shortages are beginning to be reported, affecting local communities,” the Ombudsman’s Office wrote in a statement on Saturday, adding that thousands of people are believed to have been displaced by the violence.

“Elderly people, children, adolescents, pregnant women and people with disabilities are suffering the consequences of these events.”

“Catatumbo is once again stained with blood,” the Association of Mothers of Catatumbo for Peace wrote on Friday.

“The bullets exchanged not only hurt those who hold the weapons, but also tear apart the dreams of our communities, break up families and sow terror in the hears of our children.”

The Ombudsman’s Office appeared to lay the blame for the latest violence on the ELN, which had been in peace talks with the Colombian government until they were suspended on Friday due to the violence in Catatumbo.

President Gustavo Petro – who since his election in 2022 has sought to end violence between armed groups in the country – accused the ELN of “war crimes” and said the group “shows no willingness to make peace”.

The ELN accused Farc of having initiated the conflict by killing civilians in a statement on Saturday, according to Reuters news agency. Farc has not publicly responded to the allegation.

On Saturday, the Colombian army announced it was sending additional troops to the region in an effort to restore peace.

Hundreds of people have fled their homes in southern Mexico as rival cartels fight for control of routes used to smuggle drugs and migrants.

Locals described cowering in their homes while bullets flew through their homes during a seven-hour gun fight.

More than 700 residents had been displaced from their communities near the Guatemala border, an official said.

The Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) is trying to wrest the area from the grip of the Sinaloa cartel.

Criminal organisations like the CJNG and the Sinaloa cartel have been infiltrating the region because of its proximity to the border with Guatemala and important transit routes for migrants, whom they extort.

The worst-hit communities are Chicomuselo and La Concordia in Chiapas state. Residents of Chicomuselo said 20 people – 18 gang members and two locals – were killed in a cartel battle on 4 January.

In a statement, the community described “the pain at seeing children and youths trembling in fear and getting sick from having to live through these traumatic experiences”. They also accused the state of failing to protect them.

However, the Chiapas state prosecutor’s office released a statement five days later saying that it had not received any reports of any killings in the area.

The military has been deployed to the region but locals say they are now getting caught in the crossfire when the security forces confront the cartels.

Entire families have left their homes and crossed the nearby Angostura lake by boat to escape the violence over the past days.

Local journalists said that their villages now resembled ghost towns.

Chiapas civil protection official Luis Manuel García Moreno told Radio Fórmula that 701 people had fled to the city of Comitán, most of them women and children.

Più di 800 persone sono state uccise in attacchi nel solo mese di giugno 2023 in tutta la Nigeria secondo un nuovo rapporto sulla sicurezza. Il rapporto, pubblicato da Beacon Consulting, un’organizzazione di intelligence e gestione dei rischi per la sicurezza, ha indicato che sono stati registrati 460 incidenti, inclusi 239 rapimenti. Gli attacchi, secondo il rapporto, sono avvenuti in 234 aree del governo locale nei 36 stati della Nigeria e nella capitale, Abuja.

Il presidente Bola Tinubu ha promesso di fare della sicurezza una priorità assoluta nel Paese, ma nel primo mese della sua amministrazione ha già subito un numero elevato di attacchi. Il governo sta lottando per trovare risposte agli attacchi incessanti di gruppi islamisti, banditi e altri gruppi criminali nonostante la nomina di nuovi capi della sicurezza.

Sabato scorso quasi 40 persone sono state uccise in attacchi separati contro le comunità residenti negli stati centrali di Benue e Plateau. La polizia nello stato di Benue ha detto alla BBC che altri cadaveri sono ancora in fase di recupero.

At least 30 anti-government protesters have been killed by security forces in Kurdish-populated cities in west Iran in the past week, a rights group says.

Hengaw reported that seven had died since Sunday in Javanroud alone, amid an intense crackdown by Revolutionary Guards armed with heavy weapons.

On Monday, the funerals of two protesters turned into a mass rally.

In one video, a protester can be heard saying the Revolutionary Guards are firing machine guns at people’s heads.

The footage, which has been verified by BBC Persian, also appears to show people covered in blood lying on a street and someone shouting that a girl has been shot in the head. Automatic gunfire can also be heard.

A mother who was worried about the fate of her young daughter and son protesting in the town posted an emotional appeal to people elsewhere in Iran, saying: “Please help us, they are killing everyone, killing our youth. Why aren’t people in Tehran coming out to the streets? Please help Kurdistan, help our youth.”

The BBC also obtained on Monday a video showing a convoy of Revolutionary Guards with machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks heading to Mahabad, which has also witnessed intense confrontations recently.

The city’s member of parliament, Jalal Mahmoudzadeh, said at least 11 people had been killed there in the past week.

In Piranshahr, another small town, tens of thousands participated in the funeral of Karvan Ghadershokri, a 16-year-old-boy who was killed at a protest. A crowd earlier gathered in front of his parents’ house to prevent security forces from stealing his body.

Every such funeral has turned into a mass rally against the clerical establishment. In response, security forces have taken away a number of protesters’ bodies and buried them in secret, without the presence of their families and friends.

The protests that have spread across Iran like wildfire over the past two months started in the Kurdish region.

They were sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who fell into a coma after being arrested by morality police in the capital Tehran for allegedly wearing “improper” hijab.

The Kurdish region has remained an epicentre of the unrest and has been a focus of the deadly crackdown by security forces.

Iranian authorities have accused armed Kurdish opposition groups based in neighbouring Iraq of instigating “riots” in the region, without providing any evidence. The videos posted on social media have shown unarmed protesters confronting security personnel.

Hengaw, which is based in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, said last week that more than 80 protesters had been killed and 4,000 others detained in Kurdish-populated areas alone.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which is based outside Iran, has put the nationwide toll at 419 and also reported the deaths of 54 security personnel.

Il 75enne geografo americano Esmond Bradley Martin, ucciso con una pugnalata a Nairobi all’inizio di febbraio, è l’ultima vittima di una lunga serie di assassini, catalogata dalla Ong Global Witness in collaborazione con il quotidiano britannico The Guardian, tra le fila di quanti si adoperano per proteggere la natura così come è. Il nemico numero uno di bracconieri e contrabbandieri impegnati in traffici illegali di avorio va infatti ad aggiungersi a 197 defenders assassinati nel 2017 per il loro impegno nel proteggere la natura e la terra contro trafficanti, imprese e governi. Ed il problema non investe solo l’Africa: in Spagna due poliziotti rurali sono stati uccisi da un cacciatore dal grilletto facile. Guardando all’elenco, non c’è praticamente angolo del pianeta che non abbia registrato delitti riconducibili a questa matrice: dagli indigeni in Amazzonia ai rangers della Repubblica democratica del Congo, passando dalle Filippine, il Paese più letale per ambientalisti e difensori della terra (41 morti); in Colombia sono stati uccisi 32 attivisti, in Messico 15, in Brasile 46

Se il 60% degli omicidi contro i defenders è imputabile agli interessi del business agricolo o minerario, la ong Global Witness evidenzia però anche alcuni dati positivi: dopo 4 anni di crescita, nel 2017 il numero di omicidi in Honduras e Nicaragua è rimasto stabile mentre la Dutch Development Bank, che aveva finanziato una diga in Honduras ha annunciato maggior ponderazione degli investimenti in seguito all’assassinio di un’attivista che contestava la costruzione di una diga in Honduras resa possibile dai finanziamenti della banca d’investimenti olandese.