The murder of a Bulgarian journalist shows not only the dangers of the profession, but of being a woman
It's a dangerous time to be a journalist and even more so if you're a woman. The murder of Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova is the latest example of that horrifying fact.
Marinova, the administrative director of a local TV station, was beaten, raped, and found dead on October 6. Her murder has received widespread international coverage and has put pressure on Bulgarian institutions to find the perpetrators.
She joins a list that no one wants to join. Two investigative reporters in the European Union, Ján Kuciak in Slovakia and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, were murdered for their work exposing government corruption. A third, Kim Wall, a Swedish journalist, was murdered by inventor Peter Madsen while conducting an interview with him on his submarine.
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The context of Marinova's story gets worse considering the fact Bulgaria ranks 111th in the 2018 Reporters Without Borders World Press index. That's last place among EU countries and only one spot ahead of the Central African Republic.
There are also concerns that Marinova's new TV show, Detector, which broadcast interviews with two investigative journalists looking into alleged fraud with EU funds in its first episode, could be linked to her death.
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Bulgarian officials have been quick to condemn the killing, insisting there's no evidence to suggest a link between her work and the crime.
“It is about rape and murder,” Bulgaria's Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said.
The focus on those two words, rape and murder, shows not only how dangerous it is to be a journalist in 2018.
It reveals how dangerous it is to be a woman in Bulgaria.
Marinova is the 19th woman killed this year in Bulgaria, according to public data collected by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), a human rights NGO. That means, on average, a woman is killed every two weeks. Because there are no official statistics relating to gender-based violence, the gravity of the problem is only partially revealed by work carried out by the public sector. According to a study conducted in 2017 by the European Institute for Gender Equality of the European Union (EIGE), women in Bulgaria suffer the worst forms of violence, yet tend to report such incidents least frequently.
Until Marinova's death, the murder of women had ceased to be frontpage news because it was happening so often. Most cases (93% of the incidents inspected by BHC) were carried out by a current or former partner, or a relative.
Bulgaria is a country which offers minimal protection to victims of gender-based violence. Domestic violence is not deemed a criminal offence, which means authorities can't start an investigation, or arrest the perpetrator until the victim files a claim. The legislative framework "also does not criminalise forced marriages, cohabitation or female circumcision and sterilisation. There is also no explicit criminalisation of psychological abuse and stalking," according to BHC.
There are also no laws relating specifically to gender-based violence. If someone is assaulted on the street by a perpetrator other than their partner or spouse, that crime remains outside the punishments offered by the legal framework. This problem was exacerbated after Bulgaria voted the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence unconstitutional. The so-called Istanbul Convention is the first European-wide framework intended to address legal shortcomings in different national contexts and provide unequivocal protection against every form of gender-based violence.
To say that Bulgaria's society is deeply divided is an understatement. Patriarchy and misogyny are rampantly normalised in many aspects of public and private life.
Following Marinova's death, a vigil was organised in Sofia, where dozens of women showed up with powerful and poignant placards. Two particularly striking ones, which place Marinova's death in chilling context, read, "I don't want to light any candles, I want effective measures to curtail violence against women," and "I'm here because I'm afraid when I walk alone in the dark."
Topics Activism Social Good
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