Murder of Olympic Athlete Evidences Stigma Around Gender-Based Violence

Rebecca Cheptegei suffered burns to 80 percent of her body after her ex-boyfriend splashed her with gasoline and lit her on fire. (Wikimedia Commons)

Long-distance track athlete Rebecca Cheptegei was brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend in Eldoret, Kenya mere weeks after representing Uganda in the women’s marathon at the Paris 2024 Olympics, according to the Associated Press. 

A land dispute motivated the murder. Cheptegei had bought land in Eldoret, a town she selected on account of its athletics training centers. According to police reports, writes USA Today, on September 1, Cheptegei’s former boyfriend, Dickson Ndeima Marangach, snuck into her new home in Kenya while she and her two daughters were at church. When they returned, he splashed her with gasoline and lit her on fire. She suffered burns to 80 percent of her body and passed four days later as a result of organ failure. Marangach also died several days later after sustaining similar injuries from the fire, per Reuters. 

After the Uganda Olympic Committee first confirmed the “vicious attack” that led to Cheptegei’s death, several Ugandan officials denounced the “deeply disturbing” tragedy, according to the Guardian. CNN reports that International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach also expressed he was “shocked and deeply saddened” by the news. 

The Ugandan army in which Cheptegei served held a military funeral procession after authorities returned her body to the country, per the Guardian. Mourners, grieving and indignant, attended in the thousands. BBC attests that Cheptegei’s mother, along with many others, wore a t-shirt with a slogan activists have chanted for years: “being a woman should not be a death sentence.”

Cheptegei’s death comes after at least two other incidents of female long-distance runners—Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua, both Kenyans—killed by their partners in the last three years, reports DW. Their cases are the latest in an alarming rise of femicides in Kenya. The Africa Data Hub has identified more than 500 cases of femicide since 2016, and they stress that there are “far more.” 75 percent of the perpetrators were people who were close to their victims,namely husbands and boyfriends. 

UN Women reports that violence against women is common yet significantly underreported. The patriarchal and misogynistic system that runs deep in society normalizes the subordination of women at the expense of their livelihood and safety. It is a system that teaches women to accept from a young age the intergenerational cycle of sexism and abuse, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Although the Kenyan government declared gender-based violence a “national crisis” in 2021, they have produced little legislative progress to curb violence and punish perpetrators, according to BBC. The problem is not just systemic, but also societal. Law enforcement officials often fail to respond to reports of women being abused or endangered, including, according to Joan Chelimo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, that of Cheptegei. Reported cases that police do respond to are downplayed and dismissed, per the Guardian. Lack of funding for better protection measures continues to disrupt access to resources that allow women to escape abusive and life-threatening relationships. 

BBC reports that massive protests against gender-based violence have persisted in the wake of the killings of Agnes Tirop, Damaris Mutua, and Rebecca Cheptegei . Activist groups such as Usikimye and Tirop’s Angels continue to rise up to give a voice to those who feel like they cannot speak. The growing movement in Kenya hopes to remove the stigma of denouncing abuse, advance gender equality, and serve justice for all victims of femicide.