2023-12-05 19:41:11
Thousands of Italians said goodbye this Tuesday in front of the Basilica of Santa Justina in Padua to Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old girl murdered by her ex-boyfriend. They did it by shaking bells and keys, a symbol of that gesture that so many women around the world make when they feel afraid when returning home, tightly holding the keys to the gate. But also making noise, as her family had requested, which intends for her pain to be a point and apart in the fight against gender violence in the country. “May Giulia’s memory inspire us to work together against violence, may her death be an impetus for change,” asked the young woman’s father at her funeral.
Something is moving in Italy when a black and white film about female emancipation in 1946 and the fight against gender violence, C’è ancora domani, directed and starring Paola Cortellesi, is breaking all records in theaters and It is already among the ten highest-grossing Italian films in history. At the same time, in a strange coincidence between fiction and the most horrible reality, the murder of Giulia Cecchettin led hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of the country’s main cities in the demonstrations on November 25, the international day against violence against women and girls.
At the same time, a film about female emancipation is breaking records in theaters
Weeks have passed since he disappeared on November 11, but Italy is still in a state of shock. At first the media treated it as a case of two missing boyfriends, but it soon became clear that this was not the case. Giulia Cecchettin was about to graduate in biomedical engineering. She had recently left her boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, also a university student and from a wealthy family like her. But he couldn’t stand the fact that Giulia was brighter than him and was graduating before him, so, as she told her friends, he had asked her to delay some exams. She did not agree, but she did agree to continue seeing him, even though they were no longer together, because, as she said, Turetta had not accepted the breakup well and was afraid that he would harm himself.
A few days later, footage from a security camera at an industrial complex showed a man severely beating a woman and dragging her toward the car. That Saturday night, after having gone to have a hamburger for dinner at a shopping center, a neighbor from Vigonobo, the town near Venice where she lived, called 112 alerting of a fight between a man and a woman who was asking for help inside. of a car, but the Italian police did not give it priority. The next day, Giulia’s father came to report her disappearance, when without knowing it, her daughter had been dead for hours. A week later, Giulia’s body was found, covered in black plastic bags, in a canal near Lake Barcis, at the foot of the Alps. Forensics ruled that she had been stabbed in the head and neck. She had 26 wounds, also on her hands, proof that she tried to resist. The next day, Filippo Turetta was arrested outside Berlin. He had run out of money and gasoline and has already been extradited to Italy. He soon confessed that he “had killed his girlfriend.”
Thousands of people have come to pay tribute to Giulia Cecchettin
NICOLA FOSSELLA / AFP
The case of Giulia Cecchetin has stirred consciences in a country where, so far this year, 90 women have been murdered by people in their family or emotional circle. Of them, 58 have been killed by their partners or ex-partners. She has also done it through the intervention of her family. The words of Elena Cecchettin, Giulia’s sister, only 24 years old, went especially viral, denying that Filippo Turetta is a monster. “The monster is the exception within society, the one that goes beyond the normal canons. “He is a healthy son of the patriarchal society that feeds on rape culture,” she publicly stated.
In Italy, gender stereotypes persist strongly. 16% of young people under 29 years of age consider that it is okay to control their girlfriends’ cell phones, and one in five men thinks that the way women dress can be a cause of sexual violence, something that a number of people agree on. 16% of women. At a time when both the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the opposition leader, Elly Schlein, are women, something seems to be moving in Italy because the murder of Giulia Cecchettin seems to have brought the right and the left into agreement and the Parliament has adopted a law to strengthen legislation against gender-based violence through prevention measures and greater training of professionals who must deal with these cases.
#sexist #crime #awakened #Italy