On the night of 11-12 November, 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin was murdered by her former partner, 21-year-old Filippo Turetta. The man inflicted 20 stab wounds on the girl's head, neck, arms and hands. In 2023, more than 100 women were killed in Italy, often at the hands of their then current or former partners. This is why spontaneous demonstrations swept through Italian cities.

The murder of a young girl angered Italian society. On Sunday 19 November, spontaneous demonstrations formed in Treviso and Vigonovo, where the murdered girl came from. The following day, students - classmates of the murdered Giulia - marched through the streets of Padua.

Saturday 25 November was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It was on this day that crowds of protesters took to the main squares of major cities. Demonstrations took place in Milan, Turin, Naples and Messina, among others. The largest, however, took place in Rome. More than 500,000 people took to the streets and marched through the city with the slogan "For Giulia, for all women".

According to Gazeta Wyborcza, 107 Italian women have already been murdered this year. Many have been victimised by their former or current partners.

"When we are faced with a murdered woman, the broken life of a young person, a person humiliated verbally or in everyday gestures in the family, in the workplace, at school, we should feel that behind this violence lies the failure of a society, which fails to promote real equal relations between women and men," said Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Saturday 25 November.

At the protest in Milan, slogans were chanted about patriarchy. They referred to words spoken by the sister of the murdered girl. Elena Cecchettin said that Giulia's murderer is not a monster, but the son of a society steeped in rape culture.

"It starts with things that are sometimes not even given importance but that have importance, such as control, possessiveness, catcalling. Every man is privileged by this culture. Femicide is not a crime of passion, it is a crime of power. We need a widespread sexual and affective education, we need to teach that love is not possession. We need to fund anti-violence centres and we need to give those who need it the opportunity to ask for help," the sister of Giulia Cecchettin wrote in a letter published by Corriere del Veneto.

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza