sabato 1 aprile 2017

Colombian Who Raped, Killed Girl Gets 51 Years

Authorities found Yuliana strangled with signs of torture and rape in the 38-year-old architect’s upper-class apartment in Chapinero, one of Bogota’s wealthiest neighborhoods. | Photo: EFE

The defense said it will appeal because the judge did not take into account the social position of the murderer as an aggravating circumstance.

Four months after the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 7-year-old Indigenous girl, Rafael Uribe Noguera was sentenced to 51 years and eight months in prison and a fine equivalent to 100 current minimum wages.

Yuliana Andrea Samboni's brutal murder sparked widespread outrage while shining a spotlight on both rampant gender violence and deep class divides in the South American country.

Authorities found Yuliana strangled with signs of torture and rape in the 38-year-old architect’s upper-class apartment in Chapinero, one of Bogota’s wealthiest neighborhood.

The young girl’s family reportedly left the province of Cauca — a region heavily occupied by right-wing paramilitary forces — for the capital over four years ago as victims of displacement to seek better economic conditions.

When the judge announced the sentence, she also wondered out loud whether the over 15,000 other complaints of gender violence could expect to be investigated as fast as this case, and denounced the impunity of thousands of femicides in the country.

She also insisted that Uribe Noguera was not insane and fully aware of what he was doing — contrary to his trial defense — emphasizing that his victim was “the weakest among the weak: a female, a child, and poor.”

Although he did not get the maximum penalty of 60 years, which the girl's family had hoped for, the convicted killer will not be able to get a reduced sentence given that in Colombia the law prohibits any reduction in femicide cases.

Uribe Noguera's defense added, however, that the sentence will be appealed because the judge did not properly take into account the social position of the murderer as an aggravating circumstance.

But Prosecutor for Children and Teenagers Sonia Patricia Tellez was happy about the sentence, saying in this case the maximum sentence could not be applied because the murderer had no criminal record.

In Colombia, six women are abused by an intimate partner every hour, one woman suffers sexual violence every 30 minutes, and one woman is a victim of femicide at the hands of a current or former partner every three days, according to official statistics.

The problem repeats itself across Latin America, where many countries have recently seen a surge in movements fighting back against domestic abuse and femicide. A 2014 Gallup survey focusing on the region found that "although notable progress in gender equality has been seen in recent years ... gender inequality and violence against women persist."

The report stated that "less than half of adults in 17 of the 22 Latin American countries" thought women were treated with respect and dignity. The survey also found that Peruvians and Colombians were the most dissatisfied within Latin America.

Argentina, in particular, has been in the spotlight with a spate of femicides, including the gruesome gang rape and murder of 16-year-old Lucia Perez, whose femicide invigorated women's movements against systemic violence across the continent and beyond. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences recently slammed Argentina's right-wing government of Mauricio Macri for failing to protect women from an increased barrage of systemic femicides.

On the global scale, the World Health Organization reported earlier this year that one in three women around the world "will experience physical and/or sexual violence by a partner or sexual violence by a non-partner."

Hundreds of thousands of women across Latin America have taken to the streets in recent months to protest rampant gender violence, machismo and institutional barriers inherited from colonial pasts that have fueled these systemic crimes.