Trigger warning for male violence, violence against women and death
Words by Connor Drescher, Staff Writer
Tributes to Sabina Nessa, a London schoolteacher, have continued to be left at a site in Pegler Square, where a vigil was held on Friday night which was attended by more than 500 people, including Jebina Yasmin Islam, the sister of Sabina.
Sabina is believed to have been attacked after leaving her home around 8.30pm on the Friday evening. Her body was discovered in Cator Park in Kidbrooke on Saturday 18th September by a passer-by.
A third man has now been arrested and charged in connection with the murder of Sabina Nessa, the 28-year-old primary school teacher in South London, who was found dead last Saturday.
Initially two other men were held on suspicion of murder, but later released under further investigation.
Police had appealed for anyone with information about the case to come forward, while an ‘extensive trawl’ of CCTV footage in the area is still being carried out. Koci Selamaj, a 36 year old man, was arrested in Eastbourne following the police investigation, and has now been charged with Ms. Nessa’s murder. Sabina was on her way to meet a friend at the nearby Depot bar, which police say should have taken ‘just over five minutes’ from her home, when she was attacked.
A post-mortem carried out was ‘inconclusive’ according to police, and no further details relating to how she was killed have been made available. This has raised further concerns about the safety of women following the recent tragic killings of Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, who were all attacked in public places by men they did not know in recent months.
Statistically, these occurrences are exceedingly rare; data from the ONS in 2020 showed that women only account for about a third of all murders, and only 13% of those are killed by a stranger.
Research done by the Femicide Census shows that in the decade leading up to 2018, 1425 women were killed by men. This equates to roughly one killing every three days. Additionally, almost 1 in 5 crimes reported between April and September 2020 were domestic violence cases – a significant rise above pre-pandemic levels. Approximately 1.6 million women were victims of domestic abuse last year, raising questions about the governments ability to tackle domestic abuse and violence against women more generally.
Various campaign groups have rightly asserted that solutions which require women to alter their behaviour are not appropriate, nor should they be necessary. Instead they posit that there must be far greater education of young men about consent, female agency and masculinity within these contexts, with a view to addressing these problems at their source.
Correct at time of writing (27/09/2021)