Scores of protesters on Tuesday stripped naked outside the Argentinian president’s residence as they held a screaming protest to call for an end to violence against women.
Passers-by were stunned after the women marched to a public square outside Argentinian President Mauricio Macri’s residence and took off all their dresses.
After taking off their clothes in front of stunned onlookers in Buenos Aires the group formed a pile of bodies and then screamed angrily en masse.
It was all part of a ‘Femicide is Genocide’ protest against gender-based violence, organised by a group called Artistic Force of Communicative Shock (FACC).
The women were performing a dramatisation as a prelude to the next march of the feminist collective NiUnaMenos (Not One Fewer) to be held on Saturday.
In all, 120 women striped completely naked in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the president’s home, the country’s parliament and its highest court.
The group used the tactic to demand greater protection for the victims of gender-based violence, which is on the rise in Argentina.
According to Newsweek, the 120 women who participated in Tuesday’s flash mobs were meant to represent the victims of violence against women and girls, 133 just in 2016. In April, there was almost a femicide each day, according to the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion.
One of these was 21-year-old student and feminist activist Micaela Garcia, whose alleged killer Sebastian Jose Luis Wagner had been jailed for nine years in 2012 for raping two women, but was released early in July 2016.
Her death in April moved Argentina, where the “Not one less” (“Ni una menos” in Spanish) protest movement that began began in 2015 before spreading across Latin America and the world. The protests were resurrected in June 2016 to commemorate the anniversary of the movement and in October 2016, after three men were accused of the rape and murder of 16-year-old Lucia Perez in Mar del Plata
