A Greek woman feared her ex-partner. He killed her outside a police station

In December 2023, the same month a woman was shot dead on the island of Salamina by her partner at her mother’s house having reported him to the police, a Greek artist’s work alluding to femicide was removed from the Greek consulate in New York.

A government spokesperson said Georgia Lale’s “Neighborhood Guilt”, which depicted the Greek flag made with pink bedsheets, was taken down because the consulate space should remain neutral and “there are some things that are sacred above all, one of them is our flag”.

Lale said in response that they were “saddened” that their work was misinterpreted.

“Victims of femicide are heroes of the fight for freedom and life in Greece and internationally,” they said.

Katerina Kotti, the mother of 31-year-old Dora Zacharia, who was killed by her partner on the island of Rhodes in September, 2021, told Al Jazeera that she felt “rage, anger and disappointment” at the news of each new femicide.

Zacharia was killed outside her parents’ home.

“This cannot happen again, how often will this keep happening?” Kotti asked. “My soul bleeds that another girl who was full of dreams, in love with life, was lost, another family have lost the ground under their feet and will have to struggle to put the pieces back together, this is very hard to do, they will never get over the loss of their child.”

Of Griva’s killing outside a police station, she said: “Of course, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions or generalise but the authorities should pay more attention and evaluate each case more meticulously.”

Kotti said that boys especially should be taught from a young age that “they’re not entitled to anyone and that no means no, no one belongs to anyone else”.

Protests and vigils have sprung up across Greece in recent weeks, with some carrying protest banners written with the alleged words of the police officer before Griva was murdered: “The patrol car is not a taxi.”

There has also been an uptick in reporting of domestic violence cases – and arrests.

Anna Vouyioukas, a social scientist, gender equality expert and advocacy officer at Diotima, a center for gender rights and equality in Greece, told Al Jazeera that it was “obvious that femicides may be the result of institutional violence as the state does not provide guarantees to women, and does not create conditions of safety in the community, at home, at work, in the public space and not even in the close vicinity of a police station”.

Vouyioukas said despite a spike in domestic violence cases as shown in the police’s own data, “gender-based crimes are not taken seriously by law enforcement authorities, at least not in all cases”.

She said that from 2020 to 2021, the number of women domestic violence victims increased by almost 73 percent, and from 2021 to 2022 there was a rise of 37 percent.

Vouyioukas urged Greece to adopt a legal recognition of femicide in the penal code, which she said would “make the phenomenon visible and give prominence to its social and gender dimension”.

“It is a crime committed on the basis of gender discrimination and unequal power relations,” she said, as she also called for further support for survivors and more training for police officers.

Kotti is part of a group of grieving families that have lost female relatives to domestic violence.

They would like to see life sentences for convicts that offer no prospect of release.

“We should tell it as it is,” she said. “Those who have had a life sentence are the women themselves and then the families who are forced to live in their absence.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA