TIRANA, Jan. 23 – Many Tirana residents, mostly students, joined a protest march to honor Ariela Murati, a young woman who was shot dead on Sunday after rejecting the advances of a former classmate.
Holding wreaths, candles and pictures of the deceased, citizens marched from the University of Tirana’s Faculty of Law to the University of Medicine, in front of which Murati was shot, in silent protest against violence towards women.
The Gender-Based Violence Monitoring Network called on authorities to urgently take extra measures to protect victims against a trend plaguing Albanian society.
While 21-year-old Murati was shot in Tirana, Paola Visha, of the same age, was shot in the city of Vlora the same week.
These are just the latest in a series of homicides that have lately shook society and placed violence against women under the spotlight.
A big number of civil society organizations addressed the parliament, president’s office and government with a letter asking for ways to bring cases of any kind of violence against women and girls to attention, including threats in both public and private affairs.
“No one has the right to consider girls and women as their property. A refusal to participate in a love relationship, cohabitation or marriage or the right to break these relationships off are a human right and should be respected from everyone,” the civil society’s statement said.
Members of the network also asked for a review of the existing legislation, so that additional measures against family violence can be included.
According to them, a number of international conventions require that restraining and protective orders be available for victims of any kind of violence.
It was highlighted, in the letter, that the implementation of regulation against gender-based violence has lacked coordination from different institutions, thus making it ineffective in many cases.
“These institutions, in cooperation with civil society organizations, should take effective and coordinated measures to raise awareness, prevent, protect from violence and offer special support services for all gender-based violence victims,” the letter continued.
In addition, they also called on every woman and girl that feels threatened, scared or violated in her private or public life to come forward and fearlessly denounce cases of threats and violence to the nearest authorities.
“The police needs additional training to be better prepared for any threat situation and to better evaluate the danger that could come from those threats, to avoid extreme cases of violence,” the letter added.
In the Tirana shooting case, Albanian media also came under criticism for dealing with the story in lurid details, invading the privacy of what would have otherwise been a private matter.
The attacker had romantically pursued the victim and after being repeatedly rejected decided to commit a murder-suicide. He shot the victim dead, but is hanging on to life in a comma after shooting himself in the head.
