ShutItAllDown

Last updated
ShutItAllDown
Date8 October 2020 - 12 October 2020
Location
Windhoek, Swakopmund, and other parts of Namibia
Caused byThe killing of Shannon Wasserfall; sexual and gender based violence and femicide in Namibia
GoalsTo end sexual and gender based violence; to end femicide and to ensure gender equality
MethodsProtests, Demonstrations
StatusEnded
Casualties
Arrested25
Charged 24

ShutItAllDown was a wave of anti-Sexual and Gender Based Violence protests across Namibia aimed at stopping the spread and continuation of physical and sexual violence against women. The protests, which began on 8 October 2020, followed the killing of 22 year old Shannon Wasserfall whose remains were reportedly found buried in a shallow grave near Walvis Bay, 6 months after she went missing. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Background

On 10 April 2020, 22 year old Shannon Wasserfall went missing in the coastal town of Walvis Bay. Following her disappearance, communities rallied together using social media in search of her. After 6 months of her disappearance, her father received an anonymous text message informing him that his daughter was buried in a grave kilometres away from the town. He later informed the Namibia Police who went to dig out the remains. Two days later, one woman and her brother were arrested in connection to Wasserfall's murder. [5] [6]

Public reactions

Following the revelations of the discovery of a grave, massive protests from young Namibians rang out demanding an end to rape and the killing of women in the country. Young people used the hashtag #ShutItAllDown to mobilise themselves on social media platform Twitter and took to the streets to denounce sexual and gender based violence. [7]

Protests and police brutality

The events of Wasserfall's killing lead to nationwide protests. During the protests, the Namibia police began to counter the protesters arresting 25 youths including 3 journalists who were covering the events. [8]

This followed an almost violent confrontation between protesters and the police alongside the Sam Nujoma Drive in the Windhoek City Centre. The arrested protesters took to social media to decry police treatment. They were later charged and released. On Monday 12 October, they appeared before the Windhoek Margistrates Court where several protesters joined them to continue the protests. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicides in Ciudad Juárez</span> Murder of females in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

It was estimated that more than 370 women were killed between 1993 and 2005 in Ciudad Juárez, a city in northern Mexico. The murders of women and girls received international attention primarily due to perceived government inaction in preventing the violence and bringing perpetrators to justice. The issue has featured in many dramas, songs, books, and so on.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide</span> Murder of women or girls because of their gender

Femicide or feminicide is a hate crime which is broadly defined as "the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female", with definitions varying based on cultural context. In 1976, the feminist author Diana E. H. Russell first defined the term as "the killing of females by males because they are female." A spouse or partner is responsible in almost 40% of homicides involving a female victim. Additionally, femicide may be underreported. Femicide often includes domestic violence and forced or sex-selective abortions.

Diana E. H. Russell was a feminist writer and activist. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she moved to England in 1957, and then to the United States in 1961. For the past 45 years she was engaged in research on sexual violence against women and girls. She wrote numerous books and articles on rape, including marital rape, femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. For The Secret Trauma, she was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association. She was also an organizer of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, in Brussels in March 1976.

Human Rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT rights in Namibia</span>

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender+ (LGBT+) persons in Namibia face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is not banned in Namibia, and households headed by same-sex couples are not eligible for the same legal protections available to opposite-sex couples.

Prostitution in Namibia is legal and a highly prevalent common practice. Related activities such as solicitation, procuring and being involved in the running of a brothel are illegal. A World Bank study estimated there were about 11,000 prostitutes in Namibia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Magdalena Stoffels</span>

The murder of Magdalena Stoffels occurred in Windhoek, Namibia on July 27, 2010. The perpetrator was never found. Raping and murdering this 17-year-old school girl caused demonstrations and a debate on Namibia's stance on the death penalty.

Namibia is a country of origin, transit, and destination for foreign and Namibian women and children, and possibly for men subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and forced prostitution. Traffickers exploit Namibian children, as well as children from Angola and Zambia, through forced labor in agriculture, cattle herding, involuntary domestic servitude, charcoal production, and commercial sexual exploitation. In some cases, Namibian parents unwittingly sell their children to traffickers. Reports indicate that vulnerable Namibian children are recruited for forced prostitution in Angola and South Africa, typically by truck drivers. There is also some evidence that traffickers move Namibian women to South Africa and South African women to Namibia to be exploited in forced prostitution. Namibian women and children, including orphans, from rural areas are the most vulnerable to trafficking. Victims are lured by traffickers to urban centers and commercial farms with promises of legitimate work for good wages they may never receive. Some adults subject children to whom they are distantly related to forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Small business owners and farmers may also participate in trafficking crimes against women or children. Victims are forced to work long hours to carry out hazardous tasks, and may be beaten or raped by traffickers or third parties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violence against women in Guatemala</span> Public health issue of violent acts against women

Violence against women in Guatemala reached severe levels during the long-running Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), and the continuing impact of that conflict has contributed to the present high levels of violence against women in that nation. During the armed conflict, rape was used as a weapon of war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Hannah Graham</span> 2014 murder of college student

Hannah Elizabeth Graham was an 18-year-old second-year British-born American student at the University of Virginia who went missing on September 13, 2014. She was last seen early in the morning that day, at the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia. Five weeks later, her remains were discovered on an abandoned property in nearby Albemarle County. Jesse Matthew pleaded guilty to murdering Graham and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was also found guilty and given three additional life sentences for other, previous crimes.

Violence against women in Mexico includes different forms of gender-based violence. It may consist of emotional, physical, sexual, and/or mental abuse. The United Nations (UN) has rated Mexico as one of the most violent countries for women in the world. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico (INEGI), 66.1 percent of all women ages 15 and older have experienced some kind of violence in their lives. Forty-nine percent have suffered from emotional violence; 29 percent have suffered from emotional-patrimonial violence or discrimination; 34 percent from physical violence; and 41.3 percent of women have suffered from sexual violence. Of the women who were assaulted in some form from 2015 to 2018, 93.7 percent of them did not seek help or report their attacks to authorities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ni una menos</span> Latin American feminist movement

Ni una menos is a Latin American fourth-wave grassroots feminist movement, which started in Argentina and has spread across several Latin American countries, that campaigns against gender-based violence. This mass mobilization comes as a response to various systemic issues that proliferate violence against women. In its official website, Ni una menos defines itself as a "collective scream against machista violence." The campaign was started by a collective of Argentine female artists, journalists and academics, and has grown into "a continental alliance of feminist forces". Social media was an essential factor in the propagation of the Ni Una Menos movement to other countries and regions. The movement regularly holds protests against femicides, but has also touched on topics such as gender roles, sexual harassment, gender pay gap, sexual objectification, legality of abortion, sex workers' rights and transgender rights.

The Gangnam Station Post-it Note protest in Seoul, South Korea was organized in response to the murder of a 23-year-old woman inside a public toilet by a 34-year-old man in Seoul, on May 17, 2016, also known as Seocho-dong public toilet murder case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana</span> 2019 South African murder victim

Uyinene "Nene" Mrwetyana was a South African student at the University of Cape Town. On August 24, 2019, she was raped and murdered in the suburb of Claremont, Cape Town. Her murder highlighted the broader national problem of gender based violence and femicide in South Africa, and is credited with "shifting the South African collective consciousness" and "igniting a movement".

The Fishrot Six, former Namibian fisheries minister Bernhardt Esau, justice minister Sacky Shanghala, James Hatuikulipi, Tamson Hatuikulipi, Ricardo Gustavo and Pius Mwatelulo, are a group of Namibian officials who are alleged to have masterminded a major corrupt political scandal. They are currently in jail, awaiting trial. The allegations are that the Six corruptly acquired $15 million in bribes from the Icelandic fishing company Samherji. Subsequently the revelations were dubbed the Fishrot scandal, and the accused officials the Fishrot Six. The investigations leading to their arrest were conducted by The Namibian, Aljazeera and the Icelandic State Television.

On 11 February 2020, Fátima Cecilia, a seven-year-old girl, disappeared, and four days later, on 15 February, was found dead in a garbage bag in a vacant lot in Tláhuac, Mexico City, Mexico with signs of physical violence and sexual abuse. The murder of Fátima has caused commotion in Mexico.

Events in the year 2020 in Namibia.

Monica Pineas, commonly known as Top Cheri, at the coastal town of Walvis Bay, she is a Namibian singer and entrepreneur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide in Latin America</span>

Femicide, broadly defined as the murder of a woman motivated by gender, is a prevalent issue in Latin America. In 2016, 14 of the top 25 nations with the highest global femicide rates were Latin American or Caribbean states. 4,445 women were recorded victims of femicide in the region in 2021, translating to the gender-based murder of about one woman every two hours in Latin America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide in Mexico</span> Murders of women

Femicide is the act of murdering women, because they are women. Mexico, particularly in Ciudad Juárez, is one of the leading countries in the amount of feminicides that occur each year, with as much as 3% of murder victims being classified as feminicide with ~1000 feminicide in 2021 out of 34000 murder victims. Mexico is also among the leading country in term of murders Murder rate, and 90% of the victims of murder are men. This escalation of violence began in the early 1990's and was followed by a wave of sexual violence and torture, abductions, increasing rates of women being murdered because of their gender. While the number of women murdered in Mexico has grown substantially in recent years, the proportion of female victims of homicide has not actually changed much over the last few decades. According to INEGI, the ratio of homicides targeting women hovered between 10-13% from 1990 to 2020.

References

  1. "Police Use Tear Gas To Disperse Gender-Based Violence Protests". essence.com.
  2. "Dozens arrested in Namibia's anti-femicide protests". trtworld.com.
  3. "| Namibia: Police Disperse Gender-Based Violence Protest". Africanews.
  4. "Namibian anti-femicide protesters met with teargas". The Citizen. 10 October 2020.
  5. https://www.nbc.na/news/woman-accused-shannon-wasserfall-case-denied-bail.36544 | Woman accused in Shannon Wasserfall case denied bail | | NBC
  6. https://www.namibtimes.net/remains-of-missing-girl-found-at-narraville-missing-persons-case-of-shannon-wasserfall-turns-into-murder-inquiry/ Remains of missing girl found at Narraville – Missing person’s case of Shannon Wasserfall turns into murder inquiry | Namib Times
  7. https://www.namibian.com.na/95436/read/Devastated-community-marches-for-Shannon-Wasserfall | Devastated community marches for Shannon Wasserfall - The Namibian
  8. https://www.nbc.na/news/police-arrest-journalists-and-protestors-windhoek.36565 | Police arrests Journalists and protestors in Windhoek | | NBC
  9. https://www.namibian.com.na/95528/read/Anti-GBV-protests-draw-international-concern | Anti-GBV protests draw international concern - The Namibian