ROME (AFP) – The brutal stabbings of two women students in Italy within days of each other have unleashed a wave of anger and calls for a “cultural revolution” against violence towards women.
The murder of Ilaria Sula and Sara Campanella in separate incidents in recent days come nearly a year and a half after the shocking killing of student Giulia Cecchettin by her ex-boyfriend, a high-profile case that many vowed would mark a turning point in Italy.
“Forever twins in an atrocious death,” read the Repubblica daily this week of the country’s latest femicides in a country where macho attitudes often still hold sway. Sula, 22, a statistics student at Rome’s La Sapienza University, was stabbed in the neck by her ex-boyfriend, an architecture student. He confessed to the crime, according to news reports.
Several days after her March 25 disappearance, her body was found in a suitcase, abandoned in an unauthorised dump outside the capital.
Campanella, also 22, was killed in broad daylight on Monday in Messina, Sicily, by a fellow student whom she had rejected but who had continued to stalk her.
She was stabbed in the middle of the street in front of numerous witnesses.
Her stalker had also confessed to police, according to local media.
In the wake of the killings, rallies have been held in the country to denounce femicide and demand tougher measures from the government to protect women.
“Another world is possible,” read a banner outside La Sapienza in Rome during a march attended by several hundred students on Wednesday.
“It’s not an impulse, it’s patriarchy,” read another at a rally in Messina, where thousands of people also joined a torchlight procession on Thursday evening for Campanella.
