04-04-2025
Murders of two female students spark calls for 'cultural revolution' in Italy
The murder of Ilaria Sula and Sara Campanella came nearly one and a half years after the shocking killing of student Giulia Cecchettin by her ex-boyfriend – a high-profile case that many said would mark a turning point in Italy.
"Forever twins in an atrocious death," the Repubblica newspaper said of the country's latest femicides.
Sula, 22, a statistics student at Rome's La Sapienza University, was stabbed in the neck by her ex-boyfriend, an architecture student.
He confessed to the crime, according to news reports.
Several days after her March 25th disappearance, her body was found in a suitcase in an unauthorised dump just outside the capital.
Campanella, also 22, was killed in broad daylight in Messina, Sicily, on Monday by a fellow student who had started stalking her after being rejected.
She was stabbed in the middle of the street in front of numerous witnesses.
Her stalker has also confessed to the murder, according to local media.
In the wake of the killings, rallies have been held in the country to denounce femicide and demand tougher measures from the government to protect women.
"Another world is possible," read a banner outside La Sapienza in Rome during a march attended by hundreds of students on Wednesday.
"It's not an impulse, it's patriarchy," read another in Messina, where thousands of people joined a procession for Campanella on Thursday evening.
Italy's Corriere della Sera on Thursday called for a "cultural revolution" that would educate adolescents about "non-violence and respect for others."
"This is a matter of urgency. We can't wait any longer," read the paper.
99 femicides last year
Ten women were killed by their partner or ex-partner in the first three months of this year, according to interior ministry statistics.
Some 61 women were killed by their partner or ex-partner in 2024, with the number rising to 99 when family members are included in the list of perpetrators.
The deaths of the two young women have been a stark reminder of how little has changed since the November 2023 murder of Cecchettin, a 22-year-old biomedical engineering student at the University of Padua.
In December last year, her ex-boyfriend Filippo Turetta, also 22, was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping Cecchettin and stabbing her over 70 times before leaving her body in a gully.
Cecchettin's murder sparked rage and disbelief in Italy, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets to demand an immediate cultural shift.
But critics say that the government's response has fallen well short of the demands so far.
In March, it introduced a draft law to make femicide a crime in its own right and no longer a simple variant of homicide.
Italian law already recognised aggravating circumstances in cases where the killer was a husband or relative – but the change expanded their scope to crimes where the victim was targeted just because she was a woman.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – Italy's first woman premier – hailed the reform as "a new step forward [...] towards tackling violence against women".
But rights activists and opposition parties have criticised the government for focusing on penalties rather than education to address the cultural roots of the problem in a society that's still largely patriarchal.
Members of the government, including Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara last November, have occasionally made links between femicide and immigration.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio – a member of Meloni's Brothers of Italy party – sparked outrage on Thursday after suggesting that young people from "some have our sensitivity towards women".
According to official figures, 94 percent of female murder victims in Italy were killed by Italian nationals.
