‘We Will Not Forget Her Name’: Vigil For Paulina Dembska To Be Held In Sliema Tomorrow
A vigil will be held tomorrow in memory of Paulina Dembska, the 29-year-old Polish woman found murdered in Sliema yesterday morning.
The circumstances which led to the young woman’s killing are still unclear, however the police have arrested a 20-year-old man from Żejtun in connection with the murder.
Tomorrow’s vigil, which is being organised by the Women’s Rights Foundation, will be held at Exiles in Sliema, just a short distance from where Dembska’s body was found.
The vigil will start at 6pm with attendees asked to bring a candle with them.
“Her name is Pauline, she was a woman and she was killed because she was a woman. We will not forget her name, nor the names of women before her,” the foundation said in a statement.
The foundation said that last month it launched its Malta Observatory on Femicide and would never have expected to have a new case so soon.
“Details are scant, but we know her name – Paulina Dembska. She suffered one of the most brutal forms of Gender-Based Violence against Women. We are adding her name to the long list of names of women whose life was cut short because of misogyny and relentless male violence caused by it,” the group said.
According to an update from the police this morning, Dembska’s assailant, who was arrested after creating a disturbance in a church at roughly the same time that her body was discovered, was admitted to Mount Carmel Hospital, forcing investigators to suspend their interrogations.
The police said that Dembska was in Malta as a student and was staying at a hostel in Sliema.
“There is no other way of putting it – the cause of her demise, and those of others before her, is men,” the foundation said. “We can talk about laws, we can introduce new and tougher punishments, but until we deal with the root cause, we are a far cry from ensuring that women aren’t abused and killed on account of their gender.”
“We need to stop dealing with symptoms and deal with the source of this plague. We need to talk about abuse perpetrated by men and inherent inequality and work to eradicate it. Then and only then we can talk about meaningful change.”
The foundation said it was calling on authorities and policymakers to “accept responsibility for failing to prevent femicide and step up their game”.
“We call on our legal and judicial system to once and for all take femicide, gender-based violence and violence against women seriously and to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.”
It called on Malta’s political class to “take the lives and wellbeing of the women living in this country in a serious and comprehensive manner”.
Finally, the foundation called on “good people” in Malta to see that the solution to violence “lies in all of us”.
It urged the public to ask difficult questions and to demand answers from the authorities in order to make Malta a safe environment for women.
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