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 season Olympics.
The 33-year-old elite long-distance runner got here solely forty fourth within the race, however Uganda’s girls’s marathon document 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 useless – 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, girls have suffered bodily and sexual abuse, together with grotesque murders, from companions, spouses and different male members of the family 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 girls achieved which will have made them a goal amongst males nonetheless ruled by extra patriarchal gender norms.
One in three girls in Kenya experiences not 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 members of the family, or different males identified to them.
In January this yr alone, there have been not less than 32 girls murdered by male perpetrators – about one girl day by day – in response to Femicide Rely Kenya, a monitoring group monitoring media-reported femicides – or the intentional homicide of a girl by a person.
Though a whole bunch of ladies marched within the streets of Nairobi calling for an finish to violence towards girls in an enormous January demonstration, the killings have continued by way of the yr, mentioned Audrey Mugeni, co-founder of Femicide Rely.
“We had 154 circumstances by the tip of final yr … we’re already at 174 now,” Mugeni mentioned.
At this time fee of killings, the femicide depend for 2024 will cross 200 circumstances by the tip of the yr, she added.
Elite athletes not spared
Kenya has a thriving athlete group. Within the western Rift Valley the place Cheptegei lived, professional and beginner runners from the area or overseas prepare, as very excessive altitudes – about 8,000 ft (2,500 metres) above sea degree – assist athletes acquire 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 filth roads – is the Rift Valley’s operating capital. Younger individuals there, together with ladies, get into the sports activities early on, impressed by the success tales of locals like Eliud Kipchoge and Mary Keitany who at the moment are worldwide stars. Many are motivated by the promise of fame and earnings that may assist them get out of poverty.
Nonetheless, 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 lately hit a number of excessive factors in her profession: she’d gained 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 gas on her and set her alight, in response to neighbours who spoke to native journalists.
Docs mentioned Cheptegei suffered burns on greater than 80 p.c 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 amenities 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 together with her earnings.
After the assault, the top of Uganda’s Olympic Committee, Donald Rukare, decried Marangach’s “vicious assault” towards Cheptegei, whereas the Paris Olympics organisers mentioned the “despicable crime reminds us of the alarming actuality of violence affecting too many ladies in society”.
Tirop’s Angels
A minimum of three different feminine runners have been murdered in Kenya since 2020. The loss of life 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 reduce however was starting to flaunt braids and flashy lengthy nails on the monitor as she developed from a junior athlete to a senior.
In September 2021, she placed on a stunning efficiency in Germany, smashing the world document within the 10,000km world girls’s race – referred to as the 10k street race.
Barely a month later, on October 13, she was discovered stabbed to loss of life in her residence in Iten. Police confirmed her husband and coach, Ibrahim Rotich, was the primary 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 so far the younger woman 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 tip, nevertheless, 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 at all times saved to herself,” Viola Lagat, Tirop’s pal, 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 bother. You wouldn’t know that she was going by way of something. And that’s one thing that also amazes me, that she was being abused, and he or she’s breaking a world document throughout a really robust time in her life,” she mentioned.
After her loss of life, Lagat and a few of Tirop’s associates and family based Tirop’s Angels, a centre for girls and ladies struggling abuse. Primarily based in Iten, the organisation has catered to about 50 girls survivors of abuse, providing them monetary or emotional assist. It has opened as much as girls within the sporting group and past. Lagat says most of the circumstances reported are from girls who survive sexual abuse by their shut members of the family – 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 condo near Iten. The runner, who additionally competed for Bahrain, had taken second place within the Arab Cross Nation Championships that yr. A manhunt is beneath approach for her Ethiopian boyfriend and fellow runner Folie Hailemaryam Eskinder, who’s believed by authorities to have fled to Ethiopia.
Lagat mentioned feminine athletes are extra weak to violence from male companions as a result of they wield cash and affect – the sort 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 mentioned, older males spot a promising younger woman 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 need to work arduous, for these males who’re lazy. Males who simply need to feed off of somebody’s sweat,” Lagat mentioned. “I don’t know why these males need to be with girls in sports activities, and but they can not stand their success on the identical time.”
Lorna Kimaiyo, a former scholar athlete who’s now learning 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 girls runners had traditionally clashed with ingrained gender identities.
At first, solely Kalenjin males competed professionally. Nonetheless, after the 1984 Olympics featured the primary girls’s marathon, Kenya’s feminine runners began to dominate long-distance occasions – however they weren’t hailed at residence by the lads.
“Ladies who sought to race after marriage confronted unsupportive husbands and widespread derision from others in the neighborhood. Wives’ operating was a supply of battle and infrequently led to them abandoning it,” she mentioned.
Extra feminine athletes going professional and incomes extra money from their wins is without doubt one of the the reason why violence towards them has worsened, Kimaiyo mentioned.
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 mentioned his launch would permit a homicide trial to start, after figuring out that Rotich’s life was not at risk, as a result of widespread anger that adopted Tirop’s loss of life.
Though Rotich is barred from leaving his residence county in Eldoret or visiting Iten, the place Tirop was killed, girls’s rights activists level to the truth that he was freed as one of many the reason why male perpetrators of violence towards girls aren’t deterred by Kenya’s legal guidelines.
Below the nation’s structure, suspected murderers are allowed to be launched on bail earlier than trial. Nonetheless, some kick towards this coverage, and level out that homicide trials can take a number of years. Suspects needs to be held in detention and homicide trials needs to be sped up, advocates say.
“You may be residing your life whereas someone’s daughter has been buried,” mentioned Tirop’s pal Lagat, including that the authorized system was not a robust sufficient deterrence.
Ladies’s rights teams are additionally pushing for femicide to be particularly named and encoded in Kenya’s structure to unfold extra consciousness. Additionally they need separate courts and sooner sentences for perpetrators. At current, girls’s murders are handled as homicides, and responsible events can entice a most life sentence.
Typically, girls’s murders go unsolved, activists say, and the Kenyan police are lax regarding violence towards girls by males. Since she has been counting deaths, Mugeni of Femicide Rely 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 keep in mind,” Mugeni mentioned, including that in complete, there are fewer than a handful.
“What we’re seeing increasingly more of are circumstances of murder-suicides,” Mugeni mentioned, with male perpetrators going through trial dying by suicide, forcing the case to close.
Gender desks had 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 cops additionally have a tendency to not take girls’s complaints severely, as an alternative encouraging {couples} to “resolve” their quarrels with dialogue.
Earlier than her grotesque loss of life 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 mentioned.
Whereas Kenya’s deeply patriarchal tradition comes into play, some specialists lay the blame for deaths squarely on the federal government and safety officers, saying they don’t react with urgency to girls’s murders.
“The Kenya authorities has not been fast to reply to it [and] the story of the killers simply disappears after some months,” mentioned Kimaiyo of Columbia College.
Constructing secure areas
Athletes like Lagat additional blame Athletics Kenya, the umbrella organisation for runners. Feminine athletes, she mentioned, needs to be educated to identify indicators of abuse in a relationship the identical approach athletes are consistently drilled towards doping, that’s the usage of medicine 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 normally have entry to, she mentioned.
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 arduous 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 mentioned, would permit Tirop’s Angels to achieve extra girls, particularly younger ladies in want of assist as circumstances proceed to circulation in.
“Lots of the circumstances that basically follow us are defilement circumstances,” Lagat mentioned, referring to circumstances the place fathers sexually abuse their daughters. “The explanation that impacts is that many moms don’t converse up … we don’t know if they’re being manipulated or if they’re scared for themselves.
In a single case, a teenage woman abused by her father ended up contracting HIV from him and getting pregnant, Lagat mentioned. Though it took some time to get her spirits up and though her perpetrator walked free, the woman is now efficiently managing the situation – 4 years later.
“She graduated from major faculty and is now in highschool,” Lagat mentioned, a smile in her voice. “She is operating, she is doing superb now and that’s one thing we’re actually happy with,” she mentioned.
In the meantime, at the same time as circumstances of femicide appear to be on the rise in Kenya in response to information from Femicide Rely, the monitoring group’s Mugeni recommended that this may increasingly not essentially be as a result of there was a rise within the homicide of ladies, however fairly as a result of extra persons are conscious of what counts as femicide.
“After we began counting six years in the past, many individuals didn’t know what femicide was and I needed to prepare Google Alert,” Mugeni mentioned. “I advised it: inform me when a girl has been hacked, inform me when a girl 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 girls, not as remoted circumstances, however as a part of a scientific downside, she mentioned.
Nonetheless, when she goes by way of the circumstances, Mugeni mentioned she nonetheless feels worry. “I at all times suppose – am I going to be subsequent?”
As Lagat units about her personal coaching and work, she mentioned she is now consistently on alert, watching her feminine associates and different girls 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 needs to be hitting you,” Lagat tells them. “You’re the decision-maker relating to what you need to do with the cash that you’ve earned by way of your profession … You’ve your cash. He ought to have his personal cash.”
Some males won’t essentially like the recommendation however Lagat is previous caring, she mentioned. “We’re nonetheless going to evangelise the identical message as a result of that’s the way it needs to be.”