Basma, 27, was sleeping on the sofa when her husband shot her in the head, then told police he had accidentally shot the mother of his three children while cleaning the gun.

The man is currently on trial for perfidious murder before the Regional Court in the German city of Göttingen.

On a street in Berlin, a mother of 6 was stabbed to death, and the authorities suspect that her ex-husband committed this crime.

In the city of Schwalmstadt in the state of Hesse, a 53-year-old woman was killed in a supermarket when her ex-partner shot her four times and then committed suicide.

The victim had previously reported him to the authorities on charges of physical assault, coercion and stalking.

These are just examples of 3 of the more than 100 such murders that occur annually in Germany.

Women and human rights organizations demand training courses to prevent violence from childhood and later during the professional stages (Shutterstock)

murders!

Although crime in Germany is generally declining, the number of violent crimes against women is increasing.

Statistics say that the accused in these crimes is often the ex-husband or partner, and sometimes the man whom the victim refused to be close to.

These crimes are often described in euphemisms such as "relationship tragedy" or "family tragedy".

German Interior Minister Nancy Weser told Bild am Sonntag newspaper last May, "These are murders! We should clearly call them murders against women...Women are killed because they are women...The state must admit that we have a big and serious problem here, You have to act on it."

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann recently announced his intention to make legislative amendments that would allow tougher penalties for crimes of violence against women.

Increasing cases of domestic violence

The women's rights organization Terre des Femmes believes that Germany is far behind in government efforts to combat crimes of violence against women.

“Spain has had a law to protect women since 2004 and an independent monitoring body that has been recording all misogynistic killings, including reprisals against children, since 2020,” says Yamina Lorge, who is responsible for domestic and sexual violence issues at the organization.

The expert explained - according to a German report - that the assessment of the risk of women's exposure to violence at the national level in Spain is carried out using modern technology, adding that when a significant increase in risk is detected, the perpetrator of violent crimes is forced to wear location tracking bracelets to monitor the prohibition of communication.

In certain circumstances the right to deal with participating children may also be suspended.

The expert stresses that other EU countries already have a national strategy and spend much more money than Germany in combating violence against women.

Shelter for women

By signing the Istanbul Convention of the Council of Europe, Germany committed itself to protecting women from violence, eliminating it and prosecuting its perpetrators, but according to the guiding standards in the agreement, Germany is so far short of about 15,000 shelters for women.

"Female killings, which represent the extremes of violence against girls and women, are silent in Germany, and the state does not even have a definition of the term," says Christina Wolf, who has been documenting and scientifically evaluating femicides, stressing the need to speed up amendments to the Criminal Code. And the obligation to conduct training courses on preventing violence from childhood, and later during the professional stages.

A statement issued by the German Association of Women Lawyers warned that - unlike men - there is a real risk for women of being killed or seriously injured if they no longer wish to continue their lives with their ex-partner. gender-based organization with leniency, understanding, or reduced penalties.

Unintentional, not premeditated murder

And if a man kills his former life partner in the context of separation situations, he is often sentenced to involuntary manslaughter and not to premeditated murder, as the court here takes into account the offender's turbulent emotional state, while not looking at his paternal possessive thinking, which does not allow a woman to live without him, As a reason to increase the penalty.

Basma was killed in April 2020. Since January 2021, her husband, who is more than 20 years older than her, has been tried in court.

The proceedings of the trial are closely followed by the "Against the killing of women" initiative, which organized a vigil on the second anniversary of the woman's death.

"The killing of women is a structural problem and has its roots in patriarchy, not in particular cultures or traditions," says a spokeswoman for the initiative.

Activists in the initiative say that "the trial revolves more around the criminal responsibility of the perpetrator and not about violence in the marriage and Basma's status", and they are working for "a proper commemoration of Basma" and the support of her relatives.

A memorial march was also organized in the Pankow district of Berlin for the mother who was stabbed to death at the end of last April.

The authorities are seeking to find out if all necessary measures have been taken to protect the 31-year-old woman after she repeatedly reported her husband for domestic violence.

Germany so far needs about 15,000 shelters for women to protect them from violence (Shutterstock)

Spousal violence!

The Federal Criminal Police Office did not start publishing its own statistics on spousal violence until 2015. According to the office's data, 139 women and 30 men were murdered by their current or former partners in 2020.

According to Christina Wolf's analysis, there are much more cases of femicide, for example women murdered by their brothers or cousins ​​or by stalkers.

Additionally, children are often involved in crime events.

Wolf was convinced that the number of murders of women in Germany had increased.

On the other hand, the director of the Institute of Criminology at the German University of Tübingen, Jörg Kinzig, confirmed that there is a lack of comprehensive data on the killing of women in Germany, as scientific research so far focuses on the so-called "honor killings" and murders in partnership.

It is scheduled to discuss the issue of femicide in Germany in a 3-year project in cooperation with the Institute for Criminal Research in Lower Saxony.

The project is based on criminal case files in the states of Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate since 2017. During this period, 352 murders of women occurred in the four states, and it is not yet clear whether they were victims because they were women.