U.S. Environmental Safety CompanyUgandan Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei shall be given a state funeral on Saturday after she died after being set on hearth 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 world wide.
It highlighted the extent of violence in opposition to girls in Kenya and the truth that a lot of 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 “great … God-fearing man.”
After studying what had occurred, she managed to talk to Cheptegei on the telephone whereas she was in hospital.
The pastor advised reporters that the athlete first requested about her kids, who had been all tremendous. BBC’s Africa Daily Podcast.
Cheptegei then spoke about her attacker: “You imply Dixon cannot see what I’ve accomplished for him? He cannot even keep in mind one or two issues I’ve accomplished for him and cease setting me on hearth? 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, buddies 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 current 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 demise sentence” printed on it.
The mother-of-two is the third feminine athlete to die in Kenya up to now three years. In every case, police named present or former lovers as prime suspects.
In 2021, world file holder Agnes Tirop was stabbed to demise and 6 months later Damaris Mutua was strangled.
Assaults in opposition to girls have turn out to be a serious drawback in Kenya. A nationwide survey confirmed that by 2022, at the very least 34% of girls mentioned they’d skilled bodily violence.
Some observers say feminine athletes have gotten more and more weak.
“[This is] As a result of they violate conventional gender norms the place girls solely cook dinner within the kitchen and handle kids. 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 problem of violence in opposition to girls.
“We do not need this to occur to some other lady, 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 operating, she joined the Uganda Individuals’s Protection Forces in 2008, which supported her.
Her final competitors was on the Paris Olympics. Despite the fact that she completed forty fourth, individuals again dwelling nonetheless referred to as her “the champ.”
She gained a gold medal on the 2022 World Mountain and Path Working Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Getty Pictures/BBC