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Argentine Women Protest Rape, Killing of Teenage Girl

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Thousands of people wearing black clothes braved the torrential rain in Buenos Aires to protest the rape and killing of a 16-year-old girl in Argentina.

Protesters called it Black Wednesday, and turned it into a day to demand an end to violence against women nationwide.

Lucia Perez was abducted outside her school in Mar del Plata on October 8. She was drugged, repeatedly raped and sodomized with an “unspecified object” so violently that she eventually bled out from her internal injuries.

Three suspects have been arrested and are still in custody.

The prosecutor on the case, María Isabel Sánchez, told Telam news agency that the assailants washed her body and cleaned her clothing before dropping her off at a local clinic — and running away.

“We can all be vulnerable and suffer what happened to this girl — all of us, our entire gender,” said Gergina Elcano, a demonstrator in Buenos Aires.

Another protester, Mariela Arri, said these incidents are not a coincidence.

“This is gender violence and it’s institutionalized, then it repeats itself in smaller settings, among families,” Arri said.

Demonstrations were held in 80 cities in Argentina, and 58 others worldwide joined in, according to the state-run news agency.

In Madrid, women chanted “We’re not crazy, we’re not afraid — we’re fed up!”

Perez’s story has brought attention to violence against women in Latin America. Under the hashtag #NiUnaMenos, or “not one less,” and #VivasNosQueremos, or “we want to live,” posts on social media from all over the world show women and men standing in solidarity with the horrors that the teenager and her family went through.

UNICEF Argentina also posted a series of tweets on the incident.

“All women, including girls and teenagers, have the right to a life free of violence #notoneless,” the UN children’s agency said in one of its tweets.

 

Source: CNN

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