When it comes to femicide in Scotland why don't Women of Colour count?

The National

a day ago

Her death has sent shockwaves through not only Dundee where she lived but communities of colour across Scotland. While it is right that we refrain from public speculation about the circumstances surrounding her murder, it is no wonder that some communities of colour in Scotland are feeling afraid.
I believe Dr Gomo's case ­highlights legitimate questions about ­women's safety in Scotland. I have no ­intention to stir up more anxiety but when ­listening to politicians and police ­insist there should be no wider ­safety concerns following the death of Dr Gomo, I'm unsurprised that few ­within my community believe them.
In part, this is because hate crime in Scotland is at record levels and the threat of far-right racism still looms over us in the wake of last ­summer's violence.
And while the leader of Dundee City Council has insisted the city is safe, I simply don't believe there isn't a strong enough basis of evidence to reassure me that this is true for all, especially women of colour.
I don't believe it because we know that on a UK-wide level, women of colour are one of the most ­vulnerable groups to domestic abuse and ­femicide, yet we have almost no data in Scotland for us to know the ­extent of the issue here.
The latest stats show 22% of female homicide victims in the UK recorded between 2020 and 2022 were from minority-ethnic groups – a massive overrepresentation compared to their share of the population.
Most statistics on domestic abuse, femicide and ethnicity rely on ­freedom of information (FOI) requests by campaign groups to police, yet in the most recent Femicide Census, police forces only provided the ethnicity of 41% of all victims.
When the charity that conducts the census received the pitiful number of responses from their FOIs, blatantly racist terms like 'dark European' and 'oriental' were used to describe the murdered women the census counts.
The issue goes beyond criminal justice alone, as an anti-racist ­activist, I frequently encounter a lack of ­ethnicity data in my work, and it is at its worst in Scotland. It seems it's routine practice for public ­bodies paid for by taxpayers to not publish or even record data relating to ­ethnicity and where it is recorded, we see ­consistent results.
People of colour in Scotland are more vulnerable to violence, poverty and homelessness, and women of ­colour are even more disadvantaged.
By not recording violent crime and femicide by ethnicity, we risk ­losing vital insights that could help us ­mitigate harm.
Evidence suggests that women of colour are more vulnerable to ­violence because in part of factors like ­racism and systemic ­discrimination by ­police, yet we cannot tackle an ­issue we don't count.
Scotland already has a poor track record of effective interventions to reduce violence against women and there is a real risk that the ­interventions we do have will not serve ethnic minority women.
This is more than a statistical oversight; it is systemic erasure of women of colour in Scotland. Let's be clear, for a country with a strong ­reputation for human rights and progressive ­politics, this is a national disgrace.
It feels as if our discourse ­surrounding feminism in Scotland completely ignores these issues. While women are killed on ­Scotland's streets, our public debate seems stuck on arguing about who gets to use women's loos. Reactions on ­social media too have shown just how ­flippantly violence against women of colour is treated.
Every person in Scotland, regardless of their race, deserves to feel equally safe. But if we don't take violence against women of colour equally ­seriously, communities will continue to live in fear.
Dr Fortune Gomo was more than a statistic. She was a talented ­scientist, a mother, a friend, a human being with hopes, dreams and fears. She mattered. Scotland owes her and her family justice and real work to ensure a crime like this can never happen again.
I want to believe that regardless of her race or gender, this will happen, but I am scared the real but too often unrecorded inequality in Scotland could endanger this.