Uganda will on Saturday buries Rebecca Cheptegei, who was doused with petrol and set on fire by her partner on September 1, a few weeks after running the marathon at the Paris Olympics.
The death of the 33-year-old athlete, who succumbed four days later to his severe and multiple burns, provoked an international wave of tributes and indignation.
Her attacker and companion, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, 32, was also seriously burned and died in hospital on Monday.
Human rights activists have denounced this new femicide in Kenya, where two other athletes, Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua, have been killed and their respective companions accused of the murders, since 2021.
Relatives of Rebecca Cheptegei in Kenya gathered to pay their respects around her coffin in the western Rift Valley town of Eldoret, near where she lived, on Friday.
Then it was in the rain that his body crossed the border between Kenya and Uganda at the end of the afternoon, before the funeral planned in the village where his family lives in Bukwo, some 380 kilometers northeast of the capital Kampala.
“We are extremely sad,” Simon Ayeko, her former husband, with whom she had two daughters, told AFP.
“As a father, it was very difficult,” he added, explaining that he had not been able to break the news to their children. “Little by little, we will tell them the truth.”
– Land dispute –
Rebecca Cheptegei, a sergeant in the Ugandan army, will be buried from 10:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) with military honors, Beatrice Ayikoru, secretary general of the Ugandan Olympic Committee and a member of the funeral organizing committee, told AFP.
Dozens of athletes made the trip to the small village to attend the ceremony and pay tribute to the woman who finished 44th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics on August 11.
“She contributed greatly to the promotion of athletics until her last days,” Alex Malinga, who coached her when she was a teenager, told AFP.
According to local media, Ms Cheptegei’s daughters witnessed the attack. Police said Mr Marangach broke into her home while she was at church with her children.
Ms Cheptegei’s family say the couple had been fighting over the property where she lived with her sister and daughters. “I think by that time their relationship had deteriorated,” Moses Kipsiro, Ms Cheptegei’s brother-in-law, told AFP.
“I didn’t know anything was wrong,” said Mr Kipsiro, who is from Bukwo and trained with Rebecca Cheptegei.
The brutal killing has once again highlighted what human rights activists call an epidemic of femicide in Kenya. According to the UN, the country has reported 725 cases in 2022 alone.
A report released the following year by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics found that the proportion of women aged 15-49 who had experienced physical violence since the age of 15 was 34%.
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