Violence against women claims another life and brings sorrow to a family in Cuba: the young Naomi Téllez Wilson, 24, was murdered by her ex-partner in Old Havana the previous week, according to reports on social media.
The brutal crime, which occurred in the early hours of November 20, has shocked the community of the Belén neighborhood and adds to the alarming total of 50 confirmed femicides reported by independent platforms during 2024.
The killer, identified as Oscar Oropesa, was arrested by the police shortly after committing the crime.
The incident occurred at the assailant's residence on Habana street, between Luz and Acosta, where Oropesa assaulted the young woman and then fatally stabbed her. According to sources close to the victim who spoke to influencer Niover Licea, both were neighbors at that address.
Family, friends, and neighbors of Téllez are calling for justice for this brutal crime.
So far this year, 50 women have been victims of femicide, according to the underreporting tracked by the observatories of the magazine Alas Tensas and YoSíTeCreo in Cuba.
In 2023, both platforms confirmed 89 femicides. However, the official statistics released by the Cuban government up to October of that year recorded 117 violent crimes against women.
The regime revealed that in 2023, 110 cases of murders of women aged 15 and older were tried in courts for gender-related reasons, according to data from the Cuba Gender Equality Observatory.
The authors of 378 instances of sexual violence were also prosecuted, while an unspecified number of women sustained injuries following attacks by their ex-partners.
The Cuban Penal Code does not classify femicide as a crime, nor does it use the terms "femicide" or "gender-based violence."
The official Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) acknowledged that over 16,000 women and girls, from 9,579 families, live in situations of violence in the country.
The government established a national system for the registration, attention, monitoring, and tracking of incidents of gender-based violence within the family environment in the middle of this year.
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