Up in that very scenic spot that is Kuncizzjoni, there is a small whitewashed shrine which reminds trippers of a heinous crime that happened right there.
A woman whose only crime was that she had supported a woman friend who was a victim of a dysfunctional marriage was burned alive in a car boot after having been kidnapped from the other side of Malta.
At Zebbiegh, right next to a playing field and a short distance from one of the oldest of the temples in Malta, there is another shrine in remembrance of another woman who was killed on a cold December evening because her former boyfriend could not stomach her leaving him.
There is no shrine at Bahar ic-Caghaq to remember the woman lawyer who was killed because she would not go back to her former husband.
Maybe there are other shrines here and there in the Maltese countryside to other victims of marital violence. Maybe too there are far more victims who are not remembered by successive generations.
There are some references here and there but as far as is known there is no comprehensive history of such victims.
Such crimes passionelles do not happen just in Malta. They happen not just in Mediterranean or southern European countries but also in cold Nordic climates and countries.
Some would argue that violence by males on women relates to religion but the incidence of such crimes in so many different societies shows that there is a prevalence that is not so easily ascribable to factors as religious belief.
Nor does it seem true that today’s permissive society has brought with it such crimes for the few stories we know from past centuries tell us of equally heinous crimes and perhaps of a more generalised attitude of violence by males over females.
People argue, time and again, for better laws and better policing but even when the capital punishment regime was still in force, such crimes occurred. When the system of justice is operational and in place and when the courts do not allow their judgement to be clouded by other considerations, such crimes still happen, unfortunately, but society can sleep soundly because the system of justice is there and it is operational.
More than the systems of justice, more than any other stratagem, what may change this violence by males over women (for it is almost never the other way round) is to bring about a change in the way males look on women.
To do so, to bring about a change in behavior, one must not wait till the next murder. For violence against women is not restricted just to murders.
Other societies, as we all know, turn a blind eye to other types of violence on women, from groping, to rape and anything in between. It is a society that has made significant progress that which does not allow such ‘Eve-teasing’ as it is known in certain countries. Turning women into an object is another case of violence on women which no society that wants to move on can allow.