Femicide of Sihem Belouahmia: because words matter

A week. This is the time it took to find the body of Sihem Belouahmia, an 18-year-old high school student murdered in the Gard by her cousin’s ex-husband.

A “big mistake”

The young woman had not shown signs of life since Wednesday evening, January 25, when she left her grandmother’s house around 11.10pm. Since then, speculations about her have spread, especially on her social networks, where some have accused her of having “fallen in love” with a “bad boy”, accusing her of almost looking for him and accusing her of being the cause of so much concern for the her parents. A speech that trivializes the facts and the very illustration of how society still places sexist stereotypes on women. The lead of a false kidnapping linked to drug trafficking was then cited, only to be quickly abandoned. Since then, all eyes were on Mahfoud H, who was placed in police custody.

Seven days later, in the night between Wednesday and Thursday, the latter finally admitted without batting an eye that he had made a “big mistake” and killed the young woman.

Words matter

The man put his gesture on the account of a “love dispute” which would degenerate, evoking a “crime of passion” and leaving his lawyer to share a more than scandalous comment: “I witnessed a man who decided to face his heavy responsibility in Sihem’s disappearance and put an end to unbearable anxiety for his family by leading the investigators (…) It takes a form of courage to face this type of confession, to accept to do them. It doesn’t happen without a strong emotional intensity”. When will the Legion of Honor be awarded for feminicide authors?

Words obviously condemned by the #NousToutes collective in a series of tweets published the same evening, recalling in passing that it is a femicide, a term so far avoided by all the media dealing with the case, preferring to treat it as simple news.

Since then, no less aberrant debates have raged over whether or not the victim and her killer were in a romantic relationship. Forgetting in passing, as the journalist Laurent Neumann reminded us, the indecency of such a question: “Where is the love when a man kills a woman? » he was indignant FM TV.

“We die all the time because protecting ourselves is not a priority.”

Sihem’s killer was well known to the police: he had been convicted more than 13 times, including for theft and traffic offences. In 2012, he had been sentenced to 12 years of criminal imprisonment and had been on semi-release since 2020. He was also due to appear for robbery on February 1, in relation to facts dating back to 2011. For the magistrate Béatrice Brugère, questioned by our colleagues from France Newsthis case is indicative of the shortcomings of the judicial system: “Today there are 4-year delays between education and the possibility of being judged“. Anna Toumazoff, feminist activist behind the successful Instagram account @memespourcoolkidsfeminist, is adamant: “The victims of feminicides, it’s one Bataclan a year. » And to add: “We die all the time because protecting ourselves is not a priority.”