Killing in Sion: “This is feminicide” claims a collective

“This is feminicide.” These are the words of the Collectif Femmes* Valais Tuesday December 12, 2023 on Instagram. The feminist group expressed its disagreement with the refusal of Valais justice to characterize the assassination on Monday, December 11 of the first victim of the Sion shooter as femicide. As a reminder, a man shot a 34-year-old woman in a parking lot not far from her home, before moving to a former workplace where he then shot the director and injured his secretary. The man – a 36-year-old from Valais – knew his victims.

Throughout the week, numerous elements published in the press highlighted the alleged murderer’s obsession with his first victim, the harassment suffered by other women, as well as threatening and unstable behavior for many years. . Certain legal proceedings were also discovered, notably involving the killed woman.

The incomprehension, sadness and anger are felt among associations and organizations defending women’s rights, as well as among the victim’s loved ones. And the questions arise: could this tragedy not have been avoided? Was the dangerousness of the attacker not taken seriously enough by the police and the courts? Isn’t it time to take concrete action against femicide in Switzerland?

Problematic behavior

“It is clearly feminicide,” assures Pauline (last name known to the editorial staff), member of the Collectif Femmes* Valais. “It is dangerous to exclude this word, because we make it invisible. This prevents us from understanding and studying this worrying phenomenon, which also takes several forms, and from preventing it.”

According to the activist, “when we observe the actions of the shooter, we are clearly in a situation which precedes femicide, including threats, harassment and a posture of domination”.

Several French-speaking media have in fact attested that the accused had the habit of repeating problematic behavior primarily towards women. In The Nouvellisteseveral victims thus testified to the harassment they suffered, receiving incessant messages, being followed and threatened. Some feared for their safety and yet were discouraged from filing complaints by the police, who considered the acts not serious enough. The RTS relayed testimonies of problematic behavior by the shooter with his female colleagues, such as sending numerous unsolicited messages, which led to the end of the professional collaboration.

The Nouvelliste also received a video lasting 1 hour 20 minutes from the alleged murderer, shot before he acted, which largely evokes the killed woman. We also find more information about existing legal procedures. Thus, the young woman would have filed a complaint against the man for coercion in the spring of 2021, a procedure which “resulted in a criminal conviction by way of order”, assures the media. The attacker then appealed and the victim eventually withdrew her complaint, leading to the case being dismissed. The victim then turned to civil justice, which issued removal orders at the beginning of the year.

Legal vacuum

The Collectif Femme* Valais also explains that it was contacted on Monday December 11, 2023 by relatives of the victim who wanted to inform them that it was indeed a femicide. There was total astonishment when the Valais prosecutor, Olivier Elsig, affirmed at a press conference that the murder could not be qualified as feminicide, justifying the decision by the fact that the two people did not maintain an intimate relationship. . A few days later, Olivier Elsig gave further explanations: “The notion of femicide is not a legal notion which corresponds to an offense in the Penal Code. As it stands, the investigation has been opened for assassinations (art. 112 CP), the only name which is relevant from a criminal point of view,” he states in writing. For the prosecutor, the situation is clear:

“It is not up to the public prosecutor to qualify this act as femicide or not. The current investigations are intended to establish the facts, in order to determine whether we are dealing with assassinations (indiscriminately for the female and male victims), alternatively with a murder.

For Pauline, from the Collectif Femme* Valais, talking about femicide at the criminal level would allow us to “put in place real means to protect women and save lives”. She thus recalls the definition of feminicide, recognized by the WHO, “which does not necessarily require that the two people be intimate”: a femicide is a case of homicide in which a person is killed because they are a woman.

“The shooter had threatened to kill the victim with a weapon, it is really serious that nothing sufficient was done to protect her when she told the police, even though we learned that he had two registered weapons,” Pauline laments again. She assures that the collective’s approach is in no way recovery. “Recognizing that this is femicide is not political. This is a crime that exists, it must be named, studied and prevented.”

Normalized violence

The killing which left two people dead and one injured greatly shocked the canton and all of French-speaking Switzerland. The Office for the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Violence of the Canton of Geneva was surprised by the speech of the Valais justice system. “According to the elements appearing in the press articles, we are clearly in a case of femicide. The man wanted to maintain a relationship with this woman, she did not, and in a logic of possession, he killed her because she refused to belong to him,” comments Emilie Flamand, director of the Office.

She agrees that such a case clearly demonstrates the importance of not neglecting certain forms of violence against women: “We highlight what is called the continuum of violence (editor’s note: taking into account the lived experience of women and all gender-based violence without prioritizing them). Initially, we find insults, threats, harassment, which are too often considered as something trivial, yet, as in this specific case, these behaviors are part of the same logic as more serious acts, and can lead to murder. For her, it is therefore important to “condemn any act of the continuum because, by trivializing certain sexist and sexual violence, we open the door to more serious things”.

Emilie Flamand also notes that the offense of obsessive harassment does not currently appear in the Penal Code, “one can only file a complaint from the angle of threat, or coercion (editor’s note: reason for which the victim had filed criminal complaint)”. According to her, “creating a specific offense for harassment would make it possible to better combat such acts and avoid an escalation, as in Sion”. A project in this direction is also underway at Parliament: “It is interesting to note that a certain debate has arisen around the term femicide and that we are talking about it. A few years ago, we would never have mentioned this aspect. Things are changing.”

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