About 400 people gathered in memory of Marie, in Rennes, this Saturday afternoon. Marie is this 45-year-old woman, victim of a feminicide on April 12, while her children were in the apartment. Her husband, already convicted of domestic violence, has been in pre-trial detention since the incident.
The white march, organized by the Kune collective, which brings together women from the Villejean district, started from the Kennedy slab, before going in front of Marie’s homewhere a minute of silence was observed in memory of the mother. “She got back together with him, hid that from us”says Bambine, while the husband of the victim had been sentenced in 2019.
– Pierre Antoine Lefort
Marie had also opened up to her relatives. “She was more than a friend. We had known each other since 2001, she was almost a sister to me. What happened to her, we do not accept it. No woman deserves to die, we are not Okay.“
“Every day I wonder why I survived”
In the crowd, many anonymous and women for whom Marie’s murder particularly resonates. “There are too many feminicides that go unpunished, too many women who live in fear”, testifies Agnès, who lives near Rennes. For nearly two years, the companion of the one who calls herself a “survivor” has been indicted but was released after a year in pre-trial detention. “Every day I wonder why I survived. Every day I see that there is still violence in complete impunity, that justice does nothing, that the victims are not defended. The culprits are freed , the victims have to fight every day to assert their rights. Every day I wonder whether tomorrow I will survive or not. That, nobody, neither the state, nor justice, nor the lawyer, nor nobody, can help me. That’s why it was important that I was there.”
The feminist association We All 35 supported the rally, for Mary and the others. “If we are not there, it is to ignore what happened and silence kills. Today we must cry out for Mary and all the people killed by their spouses“, says Pauline. The white march finally dispersed at the starting point, on the Kennedy slab, where a few letters remain written in chalk on the ground: the name of MARY.
– Pierre Antoine Lefort