Women in Zimbabwe have today, in Bulawayo, called for tougher penalties for sexual harassment of women.
Their demands are coming after a highly
publicized street attack and with police data showing that some
offenders have got off with fines as low as 5 dollars in the past.
Gender rights activists led by legislator Jessie Majome,
the former Deputy Minister of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community
Development, have called for minimum mandatory sentences for sex
offences.
She said a campaign to crack down on
offenders was launched this month after a video of a gang accosting a
woman in a mini skirt and stripping her naked in the Country’s capital
Harare was posted on social media and went viral. The activist said so
far only two of the gang has been arrested and their cases have yet to
become before the courts.
The gender rights activist, said with
support of other groups such as Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza),
they are
pursuing the issue in the National Assembly with a motion seeking a
review of all gender-based violence sentences by setting minimum
mandatory sentences.
She also urged the assembly to recommit
to a three-year gender based violence strategy agreed in 2012 that aimed
to cut violence against women by 20 per cent by this year.
She said, “In June last year, then Vice
President Joyce Mujuru released figures from the Zimbabwe police showing
11,000 women were raped between 2012 and March 2014 – 3,571 of them
adults and7,411 aged under 16.”
Photo Credit: Tomasz Bidermann | Dreamstime.com
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