U.S. Environmental Safety CompanyUgandan Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei will probably be given a state funeral on Saturday after she died after being set on fireplace by her ex-boyfriend.
Lower than two weeks in the past, Dickson Ndiema attacked her with petrol exterior her dwelling in northwestern Kenya, close to the place she trains.
The brutal nature of the 33-year-old’s homicide has left her household devastated and shocked many all over the world.
It highlighted the extent of violence in opposition to ladies in Kenya and the truth that numerous feminine athletes have been victimized lately.
Cheptegei died in hospital 4 days after the assault. Medical doctors mentioned that greater than 80% of her physique was burned, “resulting in a number of organ failure.”
Ndima, who additionally suffered burns when some gasoline spilled on himself, died on Monday.
He attacked the mother-of-two after she returned from a service at God’s Home Church.
Caroline Atieno, a pastor there, remembered a “fantastic … God-fearing man.”
After studying what had occurred, she managed to talk to Cheptegei on the cellphone whereas she was in hospital.
The pastor advised reporters that the athlete first requested about her youngsters, who had been all high-quality. BBC’s Africa Day by day Podcast.
Cheptegei then spoke about her attacker: “You imply Dixon cannot see what I’ve carried out for him? He cannot even bear in mind one or two issues I’ve carried out for him and cease setting me on fireplace? Why? Is he going to do that?
ReutersCheptegei’s funeral was held in Bukuwo, the house of her household in Uganda, close to the Kenyan border.
Her household, associates and activists in opposition to gender-based violence seen her coffin at a funeral dwelling within the Kenyan city of Eldoret on Friday earlier than it was taken away.
Her mom, Agnes Cheptegei, lined her face in ache and held a memento bag that the athlete acquired on the latest Paris Olympics, the place she competed within the marathon Completed forty fourth.
She was sporting a T-shirt with the slogan “Being a lady shouldn’t be a loss of life sentence” printed on it.
The mother-of-two was the third feminine athlete to be killed in Kenya prior to now three years. In every case, police named present or former lovers as prime suspects.
In 2021, world document holder Agnes Tirop was stabbed to loss of life and 6 months later Damaris Mutua was strangled.
Assaults in opposition to ladies have develop into a significant drawback in Kenya. A nationwide survey confirmed that by 2022, at the very least 34% of girls mentioned that they had skilled bodily violence.
Some observers say feminine athletes have gotten more and more susceptible.
“[This is] As a result of they violate conventional gender norms the place ladies solely cook dinner within the kitchen and deal with youngsters. However now feminine athletes have gotten extra impartial, extra financially impartial,” mentioned Joan Chelimo, co-founder of Tirop Angels, a gaggle that helps spotlight the difficulty of violence in opposition to ladies.
“We do not need this to occur to another girl, whether or not it is an athlete or a lady from a village or a younger woman,” Rachel Kamweru, a spokesperson for the federal government’s gender and affirmative motion division, advised UK Broadcasting Company (BBC).
When Cheptegei first began working, she joined the Uganda Folks’s Protection Forces in 2008, which supported her.
Her final competitors was on the Paris Olympics. Regardless that she completed forty fourth, folks again dwelling nonetheless referred to as her “the champ.”
She gained a gold medal on the 2022 World Mountain and Path Operating Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Getty Photographs/BBC