Mexico City - Eight out of 10 murders of women in Mexico were committed by family members, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Monday, as he marked the International Day Against Gender Violence. "The facts speak for themselves. Opinion polls reveal that over 30 million Mexican women suffered some kind of violence last year, and that over 80 per cent of the homicides of women are perpetrated within their own homes," Calderon said.
The president also signed a law to prevent and punish the trafficking of human beings, that joins legislation against gender violence signed in February.
The illegal trade in human beings "is the third most profitable crime, according to the United Nations, and over 80 per cent of the victims are girls or women," Calderon added.
Liliana Rojero Luevano, executive secretary of Mexico's National Women's Institute, said a national opinion poll carried out in 2006 on the dynamics of domestic relations showed that 70 per cent of Mexican women surveyed had suffered domestic violence.
The number of young women who claim to have suffered violence at the hands of their boyfriends is also striking, observers said. The figure rises to 55.8 per cent in teenagers asked recently, Rojero Luevano said at the event led by Calderon.
"Some 30 per cent of the women who have suffered violence at the hands of their partner believe they did it out of love," she said.
According to Rojero Luevano, the dating phase "launches the subordination of women, turning into fertile ground for the germ of family violence."
Calderon said "the environment of mistreatment in which millions of Mexican women continue to live" is worrying and deplorable.
"It is inadmissible that this bitter reality is not reflected in ministerial or judicial files given that the women cannot or do not file suit against these crimes out of fear - for fear of the attacker, for fear of the social consequences, also for lack of information about the mechanisms," Calderon said.
