Feminist platforms confirm new feminicide in Cuba

The Yo SíTeCreo platform (YSTCC) in Cuba and the Alas Tensas Gender Observatory (OGAT) confirmed this Monday a new feminicide on the island, whichThe number of deceased women rose to 16as a result of domestic violence so far this year.

The victim, 39 years old and identified asElisbeidi Size Rock, was the mother of three minor children and was murdered on April 11 in the municipality Sibanicú, in the province ofCamaguey, at the hands of his ex-partner, who later committed suicide.

"We send our condolences to her children, who are minors and the youngest is the result of the relationship with the aggressor.Our condolences also go to other family members and close people," the independent platforms added.

"We learned about these facts through the channels created to report femicides in Cuba, then they were published by the press, citizens and activists, and verified with community sources by the joint effort of OGAT and YSTCC," they concluded.

In this case, the news had been previously reported by the events reporter Niover Licea, who detailed that the aggressor suffocated the woman at dawn, while she was sleeping.

Feminist platforms indicated as of April 15, 16 femicides have been verified so far this year, two attempted femicides, and there are five cases that require “access to police investigation,” two of them unidentified: an elderly woman in Esperanza , Villa Clara; and a woman named Irma in Havana.

In addition to them, more data is expected on the deaths of Teresa Moliner Bosa (Havana), and Tania Reyes and Samantha Heredia Odrens (Santiago de Cuba).

Likewise, they claim to be investigating five more “alerts”: one in Manzanillo (Granma), another in Ciego de Ávila, one more in Artemisa and two in Havana.

The previous feminicide confirmed by these organizations also occurred in Sibanicú, in the town of Hatuey, where on March 25Yudeisi Pedroza, 45, was murdered, by his ex-partner. Pedroza had two children, one of them only eight years old.

Both observatories have recorded220 femicides in Cuba from 2019 to March of this year. From them,89 occurred the previous year.

In 2023, the Cuban regimefive feminicides were sentenced to life in prison, another two to 40 years in prison and more than 70% of those accused of murdering women to sentences between 25 and 30 years in prison.

However,the regime denies the femicides and alleges that they are a “media construction.”

According toMiguel Diaz-Canel, the term feminicide indicates alleged state inaction in the face of gender-based violent acts, “a media construction completely foreign to Cuban reality,” she stated categorically in her closing speech at the congress of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC).

The government did not include the figure of feminicide in the new Penal Code approved in May 2022.

In December 2023, the Government assured that thesexist murders on the island totaled 117 "at the end of October", but the criterion used was not specified.

The agencyWhich one indicated that the average profile of victims of sexist violence in Cuba in 2023 was37-year-old woman, mother of at least one child, resident in a rural area and murdered by her ex-partner.