This 25th N: let’s fight against sexist violence and government attacks

2023-11-22 16:04:00

November 25 marks the International Day against Violence against Women and from the Workers’ Party we consider it of utmost importance to address the situation in which working class women find themselves in 2023.

By PT-Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, as a result of the country’s social crisis, working class women have withdrawn en masse from paid jobs and are seeing their access to health, care, education and housing services violated due to social security policies. large cuts to the State and public services that President Rodrigo Chaves has been promoting, in continuity with previous PAC governments, together with the other big business parties, thus implementing particularly violent policies against working class women, who come to resonate with the president’s sexist positions on multiple issues.

Society is in deep decomposition, with record homicide rates for men and women, shootings, executions, recurring police brutality in popular neighborhoods and repression of peasant struggles led by women. This violent action on the part of the police has recently had misogynistic and LBGTIphobic connotations and the judicial prosecution of women has been taking place, as a mechanism of intimidation for fighting or even working as a journalist. This is the direct responsibility and policy of the government.

In this context, sexist violence is a very serious social problem that must be addressed, with thousands of complaints of violence with protective measures per year, as well as sexual crimes, more than 100 calls for help to 911 for sexist violence per day. and dozens of attempted femicides a year. In 2023, the Gender Observatory of the Judiciary reports 15 femicides, but serious alternative records place that number at 21. To which are added 16 violent murders of women, with elements that suggest that they could be classified as femicides.

As a party, we consider this situation an absolute social failure, we stand in solidarity with the loved ones of these murdered women and we place the urgency of taking the necessary measures so that this number reaches 0, as positioned in the now historic slogan. Not one less!

We denounce the impunity that prevails in the Judicial System, plagued by vices due to sexist and classist stereotypes, as demonstrated with the unfortunate statements of Walter Espinoza in 2020 regarding the Luany femicide, for which he only received a letter of reprimand, although he interfered negatively in a judicial process, also with the deficient investigation procedures in the femicide of María Tacsan as well as the impunity of powerful figures in the brutal femicide of María Luisa Cedeño. And this does not include the handling of cases of women who cannot even be identified as murdered with signs that they are femicides, whose processes are not disclosed or followed in the media, nor the women murdered in contexts of organized crime, in shootings, or even as a way of attacking men with whom they have a relationship.

Faced with such a panorama, from the Workers’ Party we wish to call on social, union, feminist and left-wing political organizations to return to the path of social protest, the only way to obtain achievements for the working class. We find it necessary to generate a National Women’s Meeting to reach a common Agenda and a Fight Plan to confront this government that attacks women from so many fronts (economic, social, ideological).

Likewise, we consider it essential that the entire women’s movement that will take to the streets this November 25, be critical of imperialism and forcefully position itself on the side of all Palestinian women who are being victims of an imperialist-Zionist genocide and living in aberrant situations due to their condition of women such as births without medical attention and cesarean sections without anesthesia, in addition to the horrendous annihilation of babies, boys, girls and men. The heroic resistance of the Palestinian people must be surrounded by the most absolute international solidarity, and the demand that our national governments break relations with the State of Israel.

This 25N we call for Palestinian flags to be flown in all marches against sexist violence, until there in Gaza, they know that they are not alone.

This 25th N: let’s fight against sexist violence and government attacks!

Let’s stop the genocide, Women workers with the Palestinian resistance!

For a national meeting of women to organize the resistance!