2021 is coming to an end. A year of successes and epochal events, but also conflicts and tragedies.
One year, the second, with the whole world engaged in the battle against Covid-19.
A year to be retraced, also in images, through the news of UnioneSarda.it.
Second stage: Men killing women, another year of femicides.
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Also in this 2021, every 72 hours, a woman died. Not for an accident, not for a fatality. Raising the knife, pulling the trigger, wrapping his hands around his neck was a man from his family circle. A partner, an ex, a husband, a relative or a neighbor.
Less than a month ago, on 25 November, the international day for the elimination of violence against women, there were 103 femicides in Italy. A provisional toll, which continues to rise inexorably: in December three other women were killed, the last of which, Mihaela Kleics , in Quartu.
An almost daily war bulletin and unfortunately in line with previous years: there were 116 femicides in 2020, 111 in 2019, even 141 in 2018, one of the darkest years in terms of violence against women.
The phenomenon of men killing women is "a serious violation of human rights", said the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. A disfigurement to the whole scaffolding of democracy, to the future towards which we are leading the new generations, to progress, to the whole of humanity. Femicide is the culmination of a patriarchal culture that starts from prejudice, from whistles in the street, through insults behind and on the net, to harassment, to stalking and rape.
Telling the stories of all the women killed in 2021 is impossible. We chose ten, knowing that none of those 106 lives are ever forgotten.
ROBERTA SIRAGUSA
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/morta-in-un-burrone-il-fidanzato-fermato-per-omicidio-wr2k9hrh
Roberta Siragusa is one of the youngest victims of 2021. The semi-carbonized and semi-naked body of the 17-year-old was found in a cliff on the morning of January 24 in Caccamo, in the province of Palermo. Her boyfriend, the 19-year-old Pietro Morreale, ends up in handcuffs: the two had quarreled the night before and it wasn't the first time. As friends tell, the boy felt a "morbid jealousy" towards the 17-year-old and had already beaten her once. That evening, according to the investigators who arrested him for voluntary murder and concealment of a corpse, Morreale hit her and set her on fire before throwing her body into an escarpment. The young man, who still claims to be innocent, keeps repeating that Roberta - a girl full of life and hopes - set herself on fire after a fight with him. Version, for the investigator, unreliable.
ELENA RALUCA SERBAN
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/donna-uccisa-ad-aosta-arrestato-un-36enne-sardo-tc6aay3h
On April 17 in Aosta Elena Raluca Serban is slaughtered in a bathroom by the 37-year-old Gabriel Falloni from Sorso. The man had come into contact with the 32-year-old Romanian national, an escort by profession, through a dating site. He killed her and then robbed her, according to him, for a sexual joke. Falloni already had a precedent for sexual offenses : in 2014 he was sentenced by the court of Sassari to four years in prison for attempting to rape a 21-year-old by luring her with a job offer. In 2013 he ended up in handcuffs for an attempted sexual assault against a woman from Sassari while he was negotiating the rental of an accommodation. In 2012, two prostitutes reported him after being beaten and robbed. On Falloni, now on trial , the aggravating circumstance of the murder for futile reasons.
SAMAN ABBAS
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/rifiuta-nozze-combinate-e-denuncia-i-genitori-scomparsa-da-un-mese-si-sospetta-omicidio-kxjn7ux0
Saman Abbas's body has never even been found to give him a proper burial. And perhaps, said the prosecutor Lucia Musti, magistrate of the public prosecutor of Bologna, "we will never find him, or maybe in years and years". For the investigators, unfortunately, there are no doubts: the 18-year-old Pakistani national, who disappeared since 30 April , was killed in Novellara, in the province of Reggio Emilia, by her uncle Danish Hasnain , 33, with the complicity of two cousins of the victim, Nomanhulaq Nomanhulaq and Ikram Ijaz. The parents apparently not only knew everything but also agreed: the girl was guilty of having said no to an arranged marriage . The whole family decided that they had to die for that no.
ALESSANDRA PIGA
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/25enne-di-maracalagonis-uccisa-dallex-con-una-coltellata-nello-spezzino-uvhimwf8
Alessandra Piga, 25 years old from Maracalagonis, was stabbed to death by her ex-husband on 12 June in Castelnuovo di Magra, in the Spezzino area. That day she went to Yassine Erroum, a 30-year-old of Moroccan origin with whom she had a baby, to show him her son, discuss their separation and ask him for a few hundred euros for maintenance for "diapers and milk": she had brought with her the one and a half year old baby and a friend. A violent quarrel broke out at home and, despite Alessandra's attempts to defend herself, the man delivered a fatal stab at her. The friend managed to lock herself in the bathroom and save the little one. Firefighters entered the house through a window.
SHARON MICHELETTI
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/spara-alla-ex-su-facebook-le-foto-armato-e-i-messaggi-non-puoi-nasconderti-u1rybmlt
On June 13 in Ventimiglia, in the province of Imperia, 30-year-old Sharon Micheletti is sitting in her car, waiting for a friend who had gone down for an errand, when her ex, Antonio Vicari, 65, approaches the car and opens fire . At least three bullets, fired at close range. The man then took his own life. After their story, which ended four years ago, Micheletti got married and had a baby. But Vicari tormented her, so much so that she had reported him twice for threats. In vain.
VANESSA ZAPPALÀ
www.unionesarda.it/podcast/vanessa-che-si-era-fidata-dello-stato-njol6kfy
Vanessa Zappalà, 26, is walking with friends on a beautiful summer evening, on August 22 , in Aci Trezza, in the province of Catania, when she is hit by several gunshots . One hits her in the head, killing her. The killer is Antonio Sciuto, his 38-year-old ex, separated with two children and an employee of a car dealer. She had left him on February 27th. “If I see you with someone else, I'll shoot you,” he had told her. “He waited for her for hours in front of the house, insulted her,” the neighbors recall. A few hours after the femicide, the 38-year-old, repeatedly denounced for stalking , is found hanged in a country house in Trecastagni. On one wall the words "I love you", addressed to parents and child children. For Vanessa, not a word.
CHIARA UGOLINI
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/uccisa-dal-vicino-ha-cercato-di-difendersi-in-bocca-uno-straccio-con-la-candeggina-mtnt5u28
On 5 September Chiara Ugolini, 27, is in the apartment she shares with her boyfriend in Calmasino di Bardolino, in the Veronese area, when the neighbor, the 38-year-old Emanuele Impellizzeri, manages to break into the house and attacks her . He wanted to rape her, this is the hypothesis of the investigators. Chiara defends herself in every way, he shoves a rag soaked in bleach into her mouth and kills her. It is the boyfriend who finds the body, worried that the girl did not answer his phone calls. On 27 September Impellizzeri was found dead in prison . In his cell, before killing himself with a sheet, he wrote these words on a piece of paper: "I can't bear the weight of remorse for the grave act I committed, I apologize to Chiara's family". The femicide will be filed "due to the death of the offender".
ELENA CASANOVA
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/donna-uccisa-a-martellate-dallex-compagno-in-mezzo-alla-strada-qpb9phqn
Elena Casanova, 49, on 20 October is in the car in front of her house in Castegnato, in the province of Brescia, when the former Ezio Galesi, 59, breaks through the window with a hammer , drags her out of the car and hits her with 16 hammered, leaving her dead body on the ground, in a pool of blood. Galesi, separated and father of two already grown children, was waiting for her, hammer in hand, with the one and only intention in his head to take the life of the woman who had left him a year earlier. "Call the carabinieri, I killed her," he told a neighbor who was alarmed by the screams. While the residents flocked, Galesi moved only a few meters from the place where Elena Casanova's body lay, silently waiting for the arrival of the carabinieri and smoking a cigarette. The victim had a 17-year-old daughter.
ELISA MULAS
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/strage-a-sassuolo-donna-di-origine-sarda-uccisa-dal-compagno-assieme-ai-figlioletti-aawg7ek0
On November 17 in Sassuolo, in the province of Modena, 43-year-old Elisa Mulas, originally from Sassari, is massacred by her 38-year-old companion Nabil Dahir together with their two 5 and 2-year-old children, Ismaele and Sami, and her 63-year-old mother, Simonetta Fontana. . After the massacre, Dahir takes his own life: ten stab wounds in all, the last one against himself. It is the eleven-year-old girl Mulas had had from another relationship who raised the alarm when, back from school, she sees that no one answers her on the intercom. Nobody can do it, not even the only person spared from Dahir's fury: 97-year-old great-grandfather , Renzo Fontana, suffering from senile dementia and bedridden. The girl asks for help, the rescuers are faced with a scene they will never forget. Dahir, it emerged, had been threatening his partner who wanted to leave him for some time with vocals on WhatsApp.
GIOVANNA CANTARERO
www.unionesarda.it/news/italia/esce-dal-lavoro-e-viene-colpita-a-morte-giallo-sulla-fine-di-una-27enne-txpi7x3w
Giovanna "Jenny" Cantarero, 27 years old and mother of a 4-year-old girl, on the evening of 10 December has just finished working in a bakery in the Lineri hamlet of the municipality of Misterbianco, in the province of Catania, and is waiting for her mother with a colleague of work when a man approaches her with his face covered by a full-face helmet. The man shoots her, including in the face, leaving her dead on the ground and running away in the pouring rain aboard a scooter. The investigations focus on Sebastiano Spampinato, 30 years old with whom the woman had had a relationship defined by those who knew them "stormy". The searches go on for days until the man, married and with two children aged twelve and seven, is found suicidal in an abandoned farmhouse.
THE GALLERY:
2021: un altro anno di femminicidi
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The stages:
23 December - 2021 in the world told through images
December 24 - Men who kill women: a year of crimes
December 25 - 2021 is the year of Italy: all the tricolor triumphs
December 27 - The long goodbye: those who left us in 2021
December 29 - The pandemic a year later, the months we will not forget
31 December - The chronicles of Sardinia - The 2021 film: a year in three minutes