It was a sun-baked August day on the streets of the French capital, Paris, when Rebecca Cheptegei rushed throughout the end line of the ladies’s marathon on the 2024 Summer time Olympics.
The 33-year-old elite long-distance runner got here solely forty fourth within the race, however Uganda’s ladies’s marathon report holder was driving the excessive of her first Olympic Video games, with years of races forward of her.
However simply 4 weeks later, she was dead – murdered by her ex-partner at her residence within the quiet village of Kinyoro in Kenya’s western Rift Valley area.
The horror of her killing left East Africa reeling. For years, ladies have suffered bodily and sexual abuse, together with grotesque murders, from companions, spouses and different male relations in Kenya. Cheptegei’s killing underscored how even profitable, elite athletes weren’t secure.
But, in response to feminine athletes and the organisations supporting them, it’s the very success these ladies achieved which will have made them a goal amongst males nonetheless ruled by extra patriarchal gender norms.
One in three ladies in Kenya reviews no less than a case of abuse by the age of 18, in response to Kenyan charity, the Gender Violence Restoration Centre, largely from their intimate male companions, male relations, or different males recognized to them.
In January this yr alone, there have been no less than 32 ladies murdered by male perpetrators – about one girl every single day – in response to Femicide Depend Kenya, a monitoring group monitoring media-reported femicides – or the intentional homicide of a lady by a person.
Though lots of of ladies marched within the streets of Nairobi calling for an finish to violence towards ladies in a large January demonstration, the killings have continued by the yr, stated Audrey Mugeni, co-founder of Femicide Depend.
“We had 154 circumstances by the top of final yr … we’re already at 174 now,” Mugeni stated.
At the moment charge of killings, the femicide depend for 2024 will move 200 circumstances by the top of the yr, she added.
Elite athletes not spared
Kenya has a thriving athlete neighborhood. Within the western Rift Valley the place Cheptegei lived, professional and newbie runners from the area or overseas practice, as very excessive altitudes – about 8,000 ft (2,500 metres) above sea stage – assist athletes achieve higher stamina, and make competing at decrease altitudes a breeze.
About three hours from Cheptegei’s village of Kinyoro, the agricultural city of Iten – with its rolling hills and grime roads – is the Rift Valley’s working capital. Younger folks there, together with women, get into the sports activities early on, impressed by the success tales of locals like Eliud Kipchoge and Mary Keitany who are actually worldwide stars. Many are motivated by the promise of fame and earnings that may assist them get out of poverty.
Nevertheless, due to their success as Olympians, world champions, and nationwide stars, feminine athletes face excessive ranges of emotional and bodily violence from males jealous of their success or trying to management their earnings, feminine athletes say.
Cheptegei, who was initially from Bukwo, a city on the Kenya-Uganda border, lived and educated in Kenya, however competed for Uganda.
As a professional runner, she just lately hit a number of excessive factors in her profession: she’d received gold in 2022 on the World Mountain and Path Operating Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and completed second on the November 2023 Florence Marathon in Italy.
After ending forty fourth at her Olympics race in Paris, Cheptegei returned to Kinyoro. On Sunday, September 1, she had simply arrived residence from a church service when her ex, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, jumped at her, threw gasoline on her and set her alight, in response to neighbours who spoke to native journalists.
Docs stated Cheptegei suffered burns on greater than 80 % of her physique by the point she was rushed to a hospital in Eldoret county. She died 4 days later in spite of everything her organs failed.
On September 9, Marangach, who’d additionally sustained burns as he tried to douse Cheptegei in much more petrol, died in hospital.
The 2 had disputed over the small piece of land the place Cheptegei constructed her residence in Kinyoro, in a bid to be nearer to coaching services within the area. Cheptegei’s brother, Jacob, advised the BBC that the 2 had lived collectively, however then had began to fall out over cash in 2023, as Marangach began to query Cheptegei over what she did along with her earnings.
After the assault, the pinnacle of Uganda’s Olympic Committee, Donald Rukare, decried Marangach’s “vicious assault” towards Cheptegei, whereas the Paris Olympics organisers stated the “despicable crime reminds us of the alarming actuality of violence affecting too many ladies in society”.
Tirop’s Angels
No less than three different feminine runners have been murdered in Kenya since 2020. The demise of long-distance runner Agnes Tirop, who was murdered in 2021, has left lasting results.
A small-statured athlete, Tirop as soon as sported a carefully cropped minimize however was starting to flaunt braids and flashy lengthy nails on the monitor as she advanced from a junior athlete to a senior.
In September 2021, she placed on a blinding efficiency in Germany, smashing the world report within the 10,000km world ladies’s race – referred to as the 10k street race.
Barely a month later, on October 13, she was discovered stabbed to demise in her residence in Iten. Police confirmed her husband and coach, Ibrahim Rotich, was the principle suspect. Tirop was solely 25.
For years, the runner’s household witnessed Rotich’s interactions with Tirop, who was 15 years his junior. He first befriended after which began thus far the younger lady in her teen years. Her brother, athlete Martin Tirop who found her physique, advised The New Yorker journal in 2022 that Tirop’s dad and mom had tried to warn her towards Rotich, however she dropped out of college and secretly married him. In direction of the top, nonetheless, the athlete advised her siblings that she deliberate to go away Rotich.
“I sort of blame myself, regardless that there have been no indicators, as a result of Agnes all the time saved to herself,” Viola Lagat, Tirop’s buddy, and fellow long-distance professional runner, advised Al Jazeera. She as soon as observed Tirop had an damage, which she now suspects was brought on by Rotich, however Lagat says she didn’t press her about it on the time.
“She’s not somebody who would let you know that she has any hassle. You wouldn’t know that she was going by something. And that’s one thing that also amazes me, that she was being abused, and he or she’s breaking a world report throughout a really powerful time in her life,” she stated.
After her demise, Lagat and a few of Tirop’s pals and kin based Tirop’s Angels, a centre for ladies and women struggling abuse. Primarily based in Iten, the organisation has catered to about 50 ladies survivors of abuse, providing them monetary or emotional help. It has opened as much as ladies within the sporting neighborhood and past. Lagat says most of the circumstances reported are from ladies who survive sexual abuse by their shut relations – like their fathers.
Edith Mutoni, 27, a nationwide star who ran 400 and 800-metre races in regional championships was discovered with deadly stab wounds in her neck at her residence in Kianjege village, nearer to Nairobi the identical week as Tirop. The principle suspect was Kennedy Chomba, her husband. He was arrested and charged with homicide, however it’s unclear if he’s out on bail.
In April 2022, rising middle-distance athlete Damaris Mutua, a mom of 1, was discovered strangled in an residence near Iten. The runner, who additionally competed for Bahrain, had taken second place within the Arab Cross Nation Championships that yr. A manhunt is below means for her Ethiopian boyfriend and fellow runner Folie Hailemaryam Eskinder, who’s believed by authorities to have fled to Ethiopia.
Lagat stated feminine athletes are extra susceptible to violence from male companions as a result of they wield cash and affect – the type their male companions, even when they’re fellow athletes, are unlikely to achieve, as there are extra male athletes and due to this fact extra competitors. In some circumstances, she stated, older males spot a promising younger lady and attempt to groom her and her household for exploitation by disguising themselves as her coach and promising to get her to worldwide competitions.
“That’s one thing that entices perpetrators who don’t wish to work exhausting, for these males who’re lazy. Males who simply wish to feed off of somebody’s sweat,” Lagat stated. “I don’t know why these males wish to be with ladies in sports activities, and but they can’t stand their success on the identical time.”
Lorna Kimaiyo, a former pupil athlete who’s now finding out the historical past of feminine athleticism in Kenya at Columbia College, says many profitable elite runners are from the Kalenjin ethnic group within the Rift Valley, the place the success of early ladies runners had traditionally clashed with ingrained gender identities.
At first, solely Kalenjin males competed professionally. Nevertheless, after the 1984 Olympics featured the primary ladies’s marathon, Kenya’s feminine runners began to dominate long-distance occasions – however they weren’t hailed at residence by the lads.
“Girls who sought to race after marriage confronted unsupportive husbands and widespread derision from others in the neighborhood. Wives’ working was a supply of battle and infrequently led to them abandoning it,” she stated.
Extra feminine athletes going professional and incomes more cash from their wins is without doubt one of the explanation why violence towards them has worsened, Kimaiyo stated.
Holding perpetrators to account
Ibrahim Rotich, Agnes Tirop’s husband and suspected assassin, has been out on bail since November 2023, after serving two years in jail. A decide stated his launch would enable a homicide trial to start, after figuring out that Rotich’s life was not in peril, as a result of widespread anger that adopted Tirop’s demise.
Though Rotich is barred from leaving his residence county in Eldoret or visiting Iten, the place Tirop was killed, ladies’s rights activists level to the truth that he was freed as one of many explanation why male perpetrators of violence towards ladies should not deterred by Kenya’s legal guidelines.
Below the nation’s structure, suspected murderers are allowed to be launched on bail earlier than trial. Nevertheless, some kick towards this coverage, and level out that homicide trials can take a number of years. Suspects ought to be held in detention and homicide trials ought to be sped up, advocates say.
“You may be dwelling your life whereas someone’s daughter has been buried,” stated Tirop’s buddy Lagat, including that the authorized system was not a powerful sufficient deterrence.
Girls’s rights teams are additionally pushing for femicide to be particularly named and encoded in Kenya’s structure to unfold extra consciousness. In addition they need separate courts and quicker sentences for perpetrators. At current, ladies’s murders are handled as homicides, and responsible events can entice a most life sentence.
Typically, ladies’s murders go unsolved, activists say, and the Kenyan police are lax regarding violence towards ladies by males. Since she has been counting deaths, Mugeni of Femicide Depend says she has hardly ever seen circumstances of femicide that efficiently finish with male perpetrators in jail due to the lax legal guidelines.
“Of greater than 700 circumstances that we’ve checked out, there have been solely three circumstances the place the perpetrator was jailed that I bear in mind,” Mugeni stated, including that in complete, there are fewer than a handful.
“What we’re seeing increasingly of are circumstances of murder-suicides,” Mugeni stated, with male perpetrators dealing with trial dying by suicide, forcing the case to close.
Gender desks have been launched in police stations throughout Kenya in 2004, however many ladies complain of a scarcity of privateness – the desks are sometimes in open areas, leaving survivors of abuse feeling uncovered when narrating their ordeal. Some say law enforcement officials additionally have a tendency to not take ladies’s complaints severely, as a substitute encouraging {couples} to “resolve” their quarrels with dialogue.
Earlier than her grotesque demise in September, Cheptegei had reported her ex, Marangach, to the police thrice this yr, her father advised the Reuters information company. Officers had advised Marangach to go away her alone, however had not executed a lot else, he stated.
Whereas Kenya’s deeply patriarchal tradition comes into play, some consultants lay the blame for deaths squarely on the federal government and safety officers, saying they don’t react with urgency to ladies’s murders.
“The Kenya authorities has not been fast to reply to it [and] the story of the killers simply disappears after some months,” stated Kimaiyo of Columbia College.
Constructing secure areas
Athletes like Lagat additional blame Athletics Kenya, the umbrella organisation for runners. Feminine athletes, she stated, ought to be educated to identify indicators of abuse in a relationship the identical means athletes are consistently drilled towards doping, that’s the usage of medication to reinforce efficiency.
With the fixed circumstances reported, the organisation should even have a secure house for feminine athletes to coach, full with the facilities they’d often have entry to, she stated.
Al Jazeera reached out to Athletics Kenya for remark however didn’t get a response.
In the meantime, there are only some government-run secure areas for feminine survivors of violence by males in Kenya. There have been some 54 operational shelters and rescue centres in 18 out of Kenya’s 47 counties, with solely two managed by the federal government, in response to the United Nations.
It’s why Lagat says she is pushing exhausting to get the federal government of Kenya to spare some land for Tirop’s Angels so the group can construct a everlasting secure home. That, she stated, would enable Tirop’s Angels to succeed in extra ladies, particularly younger women in want of assist as circumstances proceed to stream in.
“Most of the circumstances that basically follow us are defilement circumstances,” Lagat stated, referring to circumstances the place fathers sexually abuse their daughters. “The explanation that impacts is that many moms don’t communicate up … we don’t know if they’re being manipulated or if they’re scared for themselves.
In a single case, a teenage lady abused by her father ended up contracting HIV from him and getting pregnant, Lagat stated. Though it took some time to get her spirits up and though her perpetrator walked free, the lady is now efficiently managing the situation – 4 years later.
“She graduated from major faculty and is now in highschool,” Lagat stated, a smile in her voice. “She is working, she is doing wonderful now and that’s one thing we’re actually happy with,” she stated.
In the meantime, at the same time as circumstances of femicide appear to be on the rise in Kenya in response to knowledge from Femicide Depend, the monitoring group’s Mugeni advised that this may increasingly not essentially be as a result of there was a rise within the homicide of ladies, however reasonably as a result of extra persons are conscious of what counts as femicide.
“Once we began counting six years in the past, many individuals didn’t know what femicide was and I needed to practice Google Alert,” Mugeni stated. “I advised it: inform me when a lady has been hacked, inform me when a lady is strangled, and so forth. However now, there’s far more consciousness of what it’s and so we’re discovering extra circumstances.”
Extra media are additionally reporting the deaths of murdered ladies, not as remoted circumstances, however as a part of a scientific downside, she stated.
Nonetheless, when she goes by the circumstances, Mugeni stated she nonetheless feels worry. “I all the time assume – am I going to be subsequent?”
As Lagat units about her personal coaching and work, she stated she is now consistently on alert, watching her feminine pals and different ladies round her for indications of abuse – not desirous to miss any indicators.
When her workforce goes out to speak to younger feminine runners, she drums their rights into their ears.
“You ought to be revered, no person ought to be hitting you,” Lagat tells them. “You’re the decision-maker in relation to what you wish to do with the cash that you’ve earned by your profession … You will have your cash. He ought to have his personal cash.”
Some males may not essentially like the recommendation however Lagat is previous caring, she stated. “We’re nonetheless going to evangelise the identical message as a result of that’s the way it ought to be.”
