My dear friends, good day to you all!
Most of the time, when a heinous crime shocks the public, there’s a call to toughen the law. It’s a perfectly human reaction. Anger demands answers, society demands justice, and politicians often look for a way to prove that they’re “doing something.” Obviously, the question isn’t whether we should react to violence, but rather whether outrage always produces “good” law.
The recent murders of women that have dominated the news have reignited the debate over establishing femicide as a distinct criminal offense. In some cases, the perpetrators were husbands or partners who could not accept the victims’ decision to leave the relationship. In others, the motives appear to have been different. All of them, however, shared one common feature: a human life was violently taken.
No one can dispute that domestic violence and the murder of women constitute a serious social problem. Nor can anyone dispute that better prevention, more effective protection for victims of domestic violence, and swifter justice are needed. Where the disagreement begins is over whether the answer should be the creation of a separate criminal offense.
Supporters of the proposal argue that they are not seeking harsher penalties. They argue that they are seeking visibility—that femicide is not merely a homicide, but a distinct social phenomenon that must be recorded and recognized as such.
The argument sounds reasonable. However, criminal law is not a tool for sociological documentation. It is the state’s most stringent means of intervening in citizens’ rights. And in a state governed by the rule of law, the first principle it must uphold is the equality of all before the law.
The Greek Penal Code already distinguishes between homicides based on the manner in which they are committed, intent, negligence, or specific exceptional circumstances. The severity of the act is determined by the perpetrator’s conduct and not by the victim’s characteristics.
Human life is protected as human life.
So, if a specific offense of femicide were to be established, what exactly would be its practical consequence? Would it provide for a harsher penalty than intentional homicide? That is unlikely, since the current legal framework already provides for life imprisonment. Will it provide for a different assessment of the same act simply because the victim is a woman? If so, then the issue of equal treatment inevitably arises.
The constitutionally enshrined principle of equality does not allow the state to assign different value to human life based on gender. Because then the question is not just what happens in the murders of women. It is what happens in the murders of men. What happens to other categories of victims. Where exactly does the creation of special criminal categories end, and where does the fragmentation of the very concept of equality begin?
And there is yet another contradiction. While public discourse focuses exclusively on femicides, the vast majority of homicide victims in the country remain men. This certainly does not diminish the significance of violence against women. It does, however, serve as a reminder that criminal law cannot function as a “scale of souls,” assigning different symbolic weight to different human lives.
Society must confront violence against women head-on. It must measure it, study it, and combat it. The justice system, however, has a different mission. It is not called upon to classify victims into categories of greater or lesser value. It is called upon to protect every human life equally.
For the moment the law begins to distinguish which lives are entitled to special criminal protection, it has already strayed from the most fundamental principle of the rule of law: that all are equal before it.