A 16-Year-Old's Death Is Forcing Ethiopia to Confront Its Sexual Violence Problem

[polly7]

Posted 16 January 2015 11:58 GMT

Last year, on an October day like any other, Hanna Lalango was in a public mini-bus on her way home from school. Suddenly, one of the other passengers threatened her with a knife. Five men kidnapped the 16-year-old, taking her to a house belonging to one of them. Hanna was gang-raped and held in the house for several days. Afterwards, she was left in the street, severely injured. When she finally received treatment for her gynecological injuries, it was too late. She died on November 1, 2014.

Her tragic story was not mentioned in media until 15 days after her death. In fact, the brutal gang-rape might not have crossed the public's mind at all, if it was not for university lecturer and Yellow Movement AAU women rights activist Bléna Sahilu. Bléna stumbled across a brief report in a newspaper and decided to start the campaign #JusticeForHanna on Twitter. The Facebook page of the campaign states:

Seeking for an adequate punishment to all responsible for this heinous crime so that no other woman has to go through the same tragedy.

Soon after the launch of the campaign, the story went viral and #JusticeForHanna quickly became one of the top 15 trending hashtags in Africa in 2014.

Full article:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/01/16/a-16-year-olds-death-is-forcing-ethiopia-to-confront-its-sexual-violence-problem/

[samsingh]

1. horrble and tragic. i remember reading about another girl in Ethopia who was

subsequently stoned to death after she was raped and reported it.

[polly7]

2. I hadn't read of that, but how awful.

I don't think that we in the west have any real idea of how bad things are in certain African countries for girls and women. These kind of stories need to be on the news ..... I don't understand why they shouldn't be reported on internationally. It seems the only way to learn of them is online, and so many people just don't even bother. The world needs to wake up and actually do something.

[samsingh]

3. it makes me want to cry everytime i think of her

and so sadly she's not the only one.

[polly7]

4. Yes, it's truly sad to even think about. These girls seem to have no way to

escape this, either. Sometimes you just feel hopeless ...