Kosovo is marking a grim milestone, with two women murdered in a single week.
The victim was a 35 year old woman, killed while waiting in front of the Gynecology Clinic at the University Clinical Center of Kosovo (UCCK) in the country’s capital, Pristina. She was due to give birth in the next few days.
Police say they are looking for her husband, the main suspect in the woman’s murder. The victim had recently taken out a protection order from the court of Ferizaj/Urosevac against the man.
The woman is presumed to have been shot three times, after police found three bullet casings at the scene of the murder.
Albulena Haxhiu, the Minister of Justice, told reporter that “the interministerial group will gather to report each institutional action” regarding the woman’s murder.
“The fight against femicide can be difficult but we dare not lose hope but must unite as institutions and as a society to fight femicide that is taking women’s lives,” Haxhiu wrote on Facebook.
A number of protests are set to take place on Thursday. Kosovo’s largest women’s rights non-government organization, Kosovo Women Network, announced plans for a protest in front of the UCCK at noon.
Another group of feminist activists, the Collective for Feminist Thought and Movement, also called for a protest on Thursday. Referring to the women murdered this week, they said the murder of women is “not a private issue. It is a political issue, the result of structural violence and oppression of women.”
Women’s rights organizations have pointed out that the woman killed was already known to authorities. She had obtained an indictment for intimidation against her husband at the Ferizaj/Urosevac court in early August.
The same court filed a protection order against the man. The order prohibited the woman’s husband from getting close to her. It was in force at the moment of the woman’s murder.
The victim reported her husband to police in Ferizaj/Urosevac for domestic violence in July.
According to the regional director of the police in Ferizaj/Urosevac, “We had a case of domestic violence reported…We handled the case and the matter was sent to the prosecutor’s office. The victim did not agree to go to a shelter and of her own accord was sent to her family in another municipality.”
This is the second case of femicide in a single week in Kosovo. On 25 November, a 70-year-old man murdered his 63-year-old wife, an elementary school teacher.
Image via Pixabay
