News agencies:
Several thousand people marched through major Australian cities calling for safety for women after an Palestinian exchange student was murdered in Melbourne.
Sunday’s marches, part of the Women’s March rallies held around the world in support of women’s rights, gathered about 3,000 people in Sydney, who in their chants demanded safe streets for women in Australian cities.
“I don’t want my daughter to grow up in a world where she’s unsafe or she can’t pursue the opportunities she wants and I march for my son because I don’t want him to grow up in a world where toxic masculinity is acceptable,” Samantha Nolan-Smith, one of several hundred protesters in the Australian capital Canberra, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Aiia Maasarwe, a 21-year-old Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, was killed when walking home after a night out with friends in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, earlier this week.
A 20-year-old man was charged with her murder. Maasarwe had been studying at La Trobe University in Melbourne for the past five months as an exchange student from Shanghai University in China.
She was on her way home from a Melbourne comedy club and was speaking to her younger sister in Israel on FaceTime with her cellphone when she was attacked shortly after stepping off from a tram in the suburb of Bundoora.
Maasarwe’s death recharged outrage over violence against women after 22-year-old Eurydice Dixon was killed in Melbourne while walking home after performing at a comedy show in June.
Thousands of people gathered at vigils for Maasarwe on Friday and continued to lay flowers at the site of her death. A special tram carrying only flowers late on Friday followed the route of Maasarwe’s final journey.
In Sydney on Sunday marchers held signs paying tribute to Maasarwe and other victims of violence. Television news showed women carrying signs: “For Aiia and for those who suffer silently” and “I wanna walk through the park in the dark”.
The victim’s China-based father, Saeed Maasarwe, visited a floral memorial to his daughter that has grown at the site where her body was dumped behind a hedge not far from the tram station.
The father arrived in Melbourne on Thursday to confirm his daughter’s identity and to bring her home.
About 1,000 people, including Saeed Maasarwe, gathered in a silent vigil in respect for the young woman on the steps of Victoria state parliament on Friday night. Many carrying flowers and candles later took trams to another vigil at the location near a shopping mall where the body was found on Wednesday morning.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison visited the same memorial on Saturday, accompanied by his wife and two daughters.
