French capital wants to name sports venue after murdered Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei: “Paris will not forget her”

The town of Paris needs to honor a Ugandan Olympic runner who was killed when her associate attacked and set her on fireplace.

Rebecca Cheptegei died Thursday at a Kenyan hospital the place she was being handled after 80% of her physique was burned within the assault. She was 33.

Cheptegei’s loss of life was lower than a month after she competed within the girls’s marathon on the Paris Olympics and completed forty fourth.

On Friday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo proposed town title a sports activities venue after her. The proposal can be mentioned by elected metropolis officers in October.

“Paris joins its elected representatives in expressing its assist for the household of the athlete, sufferer of a femicide just a few weeks after her participation within the Olympic Video games,” Paris metropolis corridor mentioned in a press release.

Trans Nzoia County Police Commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom mentioned this week that Cheptegei’s associate, Dickson Ndiema, purchased a can of gasoline, poured it on her and set her ablaze throughout a disagreement final Sunday. Ndiema was additionally burned and was being handled on the similar hospital.

“Could her light soul relaxation in peace and we strongly condemn violence in opposition to girls,” Ugandan Olympic Committee President Donald Rukare mentioned in a social media put up on Thursday. “This was a cowardly and mindless act that has led to the lack of an ideal athlete. Her legacy will proceed to endure.”

Each 11 minutes on common, a girl or woman is killed by an intimate associate or member of the family someplace on the planet, in response to figures from UN Ladies, the company selling gender equality, and the U.N. Workplace on Medication and Crime.

“An emotional thought for Rebecca Cheptegei,” Hidalgo instructed a press convention on Friday, quoted by French media. “We noticed her, her magnificence, her energy, her freedom. Paris won’t neglect her, and we are going to dedicate a sports activities venue to her, in order that her reminiscence and her story can be current amongst us.”

Two elite Kenyan runners, Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua, had been beforehand killed, allegedly by their companions, in the identical space as Cheptegi inside six months of each other.

Tirop’s loss of life in October 2021 sparked protests that had been amplified when lots of of athletes took to the streets of the city of Iten calling for stricter legal guidelines and gender-based outreach facilities.

Tirop’s husband is on trial for the 25-year-old runner’s homicide.

4 in 10 girls or an estimated 41% of relationship or married Kenyan girls have skilled bodily or sexual violence perpetrated by their present or most up-to-date associate, in response to the Kenya Demographic and Well being Survey 2022.