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News > Latin America

70,000 Women March Against Femicide in Argentina

  • The National Women’s Forum has been organized in a different Argentine city since its founding in 1986, three years after the end of the military dictatorship.

    The National Women’s Forum has been organized in a different Argentine city since its founding in 1986, three years after the end of the military dictatorship. | Photo: @lacapital

Published 9 October 2016
Opinion

Feminists denounced police brutality at the end of the march.

Thousands of women marched in Argentina against gender violence, femicide and for abortion rights Sunday at the 31st annual National Women’s Forum that took place in Rosario, Santa Fe province.

About 70,000 activists, academics and other feminists were expected to attend the three-day event this weekend, which kicked off Saturday morning and will culminate on Monday with workshops and conferences.

The march ended peacefully at the city's historic National Flag Monument, with women chanting slogans like, “If they touch one of us, we all will demonstrate,” “No more femicides,” “Ni Una Menos” (Not One Less) and “For Free, Safe and Accessible Abortion,” among others.

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The national lawmaker from the Front for Victory, Soledad Sosa, participated in the event, as well as other lawmakers and former vice-presidential candidate Myriam Bregman from the Socialist Workers’ Party.

“Santa Fe welcomes us with the alarming statistics that it has become the province with the second-highest rate of femicides across the country,” Bregman said while attending the opening rally, reported Buenos Aires Tribune.

“Here we can discuss what steps need to be taken in the drive to win our rights,” Bregman added. “The responsibility of governments and state institutions to face this reality is a constant,” she added.

“We came to Rosario with a huge incentive to fight for our rights: legal abortion, gender violence, and dismantling networks of human trafficking.

The 2015 march that took place in Mar Del Plata, in Buenos Aires province, was marred by violent attacks by the police forces, as well as far-right and neo-Nazi groups. The protest was peaceful this year, overall, although women denounced police violence at the end of the march on social media, with even a reporter from state-media Telam facing injury from a rubber bullet.

Femicide was at the core of women's demands this year, with one woman murdered every 30 hours according to feminist organizations, sparking a wave of protests in March 2015 in the Argentine capital under the name of “Ni Una Menos.”

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