Every time a woman is murdered in Cyprus, it is the same tragic script, played on repeat. “No official complaint had ever been filed.” “The police were aware of certain things.” “The neighbors said they were a quiet couple who never caused trouble.” The crime is often committed in front of the child, and the conclusion is always fatal: a woman dead, children left with wounds that never heal, and a society asking itself how it failed to see the signs.
The murder of 58-year-old Afsaneh Mohammadi, an immigrant from Iran, is no exception. Murdered with an iron bar by her former husband, before her daughter and as a baby slept in the next room. Another entry in Cyprus’ ledger of shame.
It is the second femicide in just eight weeks, yet another “stunning” development in a country that keeps being stunned, but never changes.
The pattern was followed almost mechanically: the perpetrator surrendered to the police immediately after the crime. The authorities admitted that “some things were known” but there had never been a formal complaint. Case classified as a femicide. He turned himself in. Case “closed”.
And here lies the cruel oxymoron: the state builds the entire chain of protection on whether the victim will denounce her abuser. But the victim is, by definition, the one least able to do so. It takes courage, confidence, and access to information to stand up to an abuser and walk into a police station. And if she had all that, perhaps she would not have been trapped in violence in the first place.
This reliance on a formal complaint is a deadly trap for the victims. Women who are terrified, economically dependent, or trying to protect their children are precisely the ones least likely to find their voice. Silence for them is not a choice but a condition of survival. And so the state stands by as a spectator, until silence turns into murder.
The familiar social responses are also on repeat. Political parties and officials “condemned the murder”. A “family tragedy”, they wrote in press releases and “the product of a patriarchal system. Women’s rights groups again highlighted the particular vulnerability of marginalised women, the poor, the immigrants, those without social or institutional protection. For them, gender-based violence is not an abstract threat but a daily trap with no way out.
And the neighbors said the same as always: “They seemed peaceful, they never caused any problems”. Behind closed doors, however, the real story was written, a story of fear, coercion, and silence. And when that door finally opened, it was already too late.
The news bulletins broadcast the tragedy, the authorities promise “measures,” but the essence never changes: when will we finally understand that vulnerable people lack precisely the tools required to file a complaint? When will this truth be built into law and practice?
A few days ago it was a woman in Volos, another in Italy. “The jealous husband”. “The forced pregnancy”. “The secret abortions”. “With a rock”. “With an iron bar”. “With a gun”. “By the husband, the ex, the lover.” The details shift, but the pattern is identical. All the warning signs are there, every marker that should have activated protection. Everything except for the complaint.
And so we are shocked, once again. And we will be shocked again the next time. But the point of these stories is not how horrified we are today, but whether anything changes tomorrow. Because if nothing changes, then the next femicide is already scheduled.