Thousands of people protest in Italy after the murder of a young student

Thousands of people took to the streets this Saturday in several Italian cities to protest violence against women following the murder of 22-year-old university student Giulia Cecchettine in the Venice area.

Demonstrations took place in Rome, Milan and other cities across the country, Europa Press reported, while the ex-fiancé, believed to be the young woman’s killer, was arrested in Germany, where he fled and from where he was extradited, Bloomberg reported.

“I want to tell Italian women that they are not alone,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on Facebook after the death of a young woman preparing to graduate from university.

There were 106 femicides in Italy in 2022, two more than the previous year, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), and across Europe as a whole more than 3,000 people died at the hands of their partners. partners or family members, according to the European Commission.

“The rights of women and girls are under threat, limited or completely eliminated at the global level, marking a reversal of the gains of recent decades,” warned High Representative for European Foreign Policy Joseph Borell.

For her part, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended the need to create laws to combat violence against women on the social network X (formerly Twitter).