No room for silence in fighting gender violence - Tomasi

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 29 - There can be no room for silence in fighting violence against women, said Treviso bishop Michele Tomasi at the funeral of Vanessa Ballan, the 26-year-old pregnant woman who was stabbed to death outside her home in the province of Treviso town of Altivole on December 19, on Friday.
    The bishop invited mourners gathered at Castelfranco cathedral, including Ballan's partner Nicola Scapinello, to "the silence of prayer that invokes the consolation of victims and the conversion of the violent" but "not in the search for justice".
    There is no place for silence "in the commitment to a civilisation that rejects violence against women in word and deed, and is finally able to overcome the madness of wanting to possess a person, or of wanting to use violence to determine their choices and decisions", said Tomasi.
    The bishop described the femicide as being beyond "any even pessimistic forecast" and added that "there is no meaning in her brutal killing".
    Ballan, who was also the mother of a four-year-old boy, was murdered with seven knife blows.
    A 41-year-old Kosovo national, Bujar Fandaj, has been arrested on suspicion of the murder.
    The victim had recently reported Fandaj to the police for stalking, but no precautionary action was taken. Veneto regional governor Luca Zaia attended the funeral and proclaimed Friday a day of regional mourning, as he did on the day of the funeral of another veneto femicide victim, Giulia Cecchettin, in December. (ANSA).