Ottawa Launches Campaign to Combat Gender-Based Violence

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A 16-day campaign against gender-based violence kicked off at Ottawa City Hall on Friday, handing out purple ribbons as the Heritage Building lit up purple.

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Dozens gathered outside the Heritage Building, built in 1874 as a school for teachers. The building will continue to be dyed purple during the campaign to “shed light on gender-based violence”.

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Jo-Anne Stead of Grandmothers Advocacy Network said:

Friday’s ceremony was held to mark the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It also marks the beginning of her two-week campaign against gender-based violence in Ottawa and around the world.

The campaign ends on December 10th, International Human Rights Day.

Ottawa West Nepean MP Anita Vandenveld told the audience that women in Iran, Ukraine and Afghanistan are under attack and that gender-based violence continues to be a global scourge. “Gender conservatism is on the rise right now,” Vandenbert said.

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Tara Alagheband, an Iranian-Canadian member of Women, Life, Freedom, called on activists and politicians to support Iranian women who risked their lives 86 days after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody. Appealed to both homes. Iranian moral police. Since then, Iran has been torn apart by women-led demonstrations, but the Iranian government has responded with increasing repression and violence.

“Except for a few, there has been nothing but silence from political leaders, humanitarians and gender equality initiatives,” Arageband told the Ottawa crowd. “About your devastating and paralyzing silence, I am here to call you.”

The annual campaign against gender-based violence comes in a year that has proven particularly deadly for women in Ottawa: half of the city’s homicide victims in 2022 were women or girls.

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This is an unusually high percentage because men typically make up a significant percentage of homicide victims in Canada. According to a recent Statistics Canada analysis of national crime data, men and boys have made up 75% of his homicide victims since 1961.

According to the same Statistics Canada report, 7 out of 10 female homicide victims last year were killed by a spouse, partner or family member. This percentage has remained consistent over the past decade.

So far this year, six women and a 15-year-old girl have been murdered in Ottawa. The Ottawa Police Homicide Division is also investigating the death of Mary Papazzi, a woman whose body was found at a construction site in Vanier in late September. Inuk, 37, disappeared more than five years before her.

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Among other female murder victims this year:

• Kieu Lam, 88, was murdered in his Bowmount Street home and found dead on 16 October. Two women were charged with first-degree murder in the case.

• Yu Kun Xie, 78, died on September 17, a day after police were called to his Gladstone Avenue home. A 57-year-old man has been charged with manslaughter in connection with her death.

• Inuk Savanna Pikuyak, 22, who came to Ottawa from Nunavut to study nursing, died on 11 September at her home in Woodvale Green.

• On the night of June 27, 50-year-old Anne-Marie Reddy and her 15-year-old daughter Jasmine Reddy were stabbed to death by 19-year-old Joshua Graves. Harassment, Assault, Sexual Assault. Graves was shot dead by police.

• Marie Gabriel, 24, a mother of two young children, was beaten to death inside her Hetherington Road townhouse on 27 March. The father of the two children has been charged with second-degree murder.

• Sahur Yare, 20, was shot dead on February 21 while in a car with her boyfriend in the Greenboro district. A 16-year-old young criminal has been charged with first-degree murder.