The case of Ugandan Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei shocking and stunning. Worst of all, it is far from an isolated case. According to the United Nations, more than 20,000 girls and women were killed by their partners or family members in 2022, which makes it all the more imperative to call incidents like this exactly what they are: murder.
33-year-old Cheptegei died of multiple organ failure on Thursday morning. Her partner Dickson Ndiema had poured petrol on her and set her on fire days before, causing her to suffer burns on 80 percent of her body. The violent act is said to have been triggered by a previous dispute over a piece of land.
If Cheptegei had not run in front of the world public in Paris a few weeks ago, her tragic death would hardly have caused such waves on the internet. It might have gone unnoticed that another woman in Kenya had been killed by her husband. In 2021, the runner Agnes Tirop died, and in 2022, the athlete Damaris Mutua was strangled. In both cases, suspicion fell on the husbands.
Restraint leads to trivialization
The UN has now strongly condemned the crime, but the reporting has nevertheless failed to emphasise the seriousness of the Cheptegei case. It is certainly not denied that it was a homicide. What is missing, however, is an emphasis on the violence that was committed against Cheptegei. Many article headlines prefer to describe the incident with euphemisms such as: “Rebecca Cheptegei from Uganda succumbs to petrol attack”, “dies after fire attack” or “died after fire attack”. It seems as if there is a competition to see who can find the best paraphrase for the word “murder”.
But why be cautious? Restraint leads to trivialization. Calling the incident what it is contributes to society treating it as such: as a murder.
Of course, both terms should be used with caution. Especially femicides, which are defined as the killing of women and girls, are the most blatant form of gender-based violence. From a legal perspective, however, murder is defined as the killing of a person out of a desire to murder, to satisfy sexual urges, out of greed or for other base motives (§ 211) – a definition that the Cheptegei murder case clearly fits. So why the reticence?
