The 34-year-old man who disrupted the stage program of the femicide march in Rotterdam on Sunday was released later that day. He is suspected of disturbing public order. A report has been filed against the man.
The man interrupted Wim Hertgers’ speech on Schouwburgplein. Hertgers’ 31-year-old daughter was murdered in October 2023 by her husband because she wanted to divorce him.
The suspect climbed onto the stage and snatched the microphone from Hertgers’ hands. He then shouted something about polarization, but he didn’t seem to have a coherent story. Police quickly removed him from the stage. He may have been confused.
“This is exactly the kind of people I am fighting against,” Hertgers said after the incident to Omroep Gelderland. “I had no doubt about my safety, because there were enough police present. All I wanted was to finish my speech.”
The protest march against femicide in Rotterdam was organized by the feminist group Dolle Mina’s. According to press agency ANP, at least a thousand people participated.
When is something femicide?
Femicide, or the murder of women, is the intentional killing of women (or girls) because they are women, according to the Public Prosecution Service. But that makes it a difficult definition, because how do you prove that? Some experts and institutions call every murder of a woman femicide, others only do so if an (ex-)partner is the perpetrator.
According to Professor Marieke Liem of Leiden University, it concerns an average of forty murders of women per year. She should know, because she keeps track of those figures for the Femicide Monitor. The website emphasizes again that not every murder of a woman has to be femicide. “There are also cases where the incident had nothing to do with gender.” But until there is a good scientific way to make this distinction, the monitor keeps track of all murders of women.