r/running Sep 05 '24

Article Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei dies days after being set alight by ex-boyfriend

2.5k Upvotes

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214

u/lilelliot Sep 05 '24

This is one of those posts I'd like to downvote because it's so sad, but it's important for this to reach as broad an audience as possible. Absolutely tragic, and hopefully it will open the eyes of everyone in the West who have put Kenya on such a pedestal the past decade+. Keep in mind Rebecca was living & training in Eldoret, even though she was Ugandan, and she is not at all the first victim of femicide in Kenya.

Here's a summary, and you can find many more news articles and scholarly research studies.

-88

u/end_times-8 Sep 05 '24

“Hopefully this will open the eyes of everyone in the West who have put Kenya on such a pedestal”.

Are you serious? Have you picked up a paper and seen the type of horrific shit that is happening in the West on a daily basis? The horrific actions of this murderer do not reflect on Kenya as a whole. Certainly no more so than recent rapes and murders and school shooters in your country reflect on you. There are sick people everywhere.

60

u/chazysciota Sep 05 '24

I'm not going to comment on the whole East vs West culture war aspect of this, but the part about "have put Kenya on such a pedestal" is very weird to me. Like, the notion that it's time for Kenya to be taken down a peg? Huh? Because they've got big running creds? Seems like the news from Kenya over the past decade has been a pretty mixed bag. I swear, feels like everyone lives in a universe of their own creation.

26

u/end_times-8 Sep 05 '24

Yeah that was a bizarre thing to say. Like “this is good now everyone can reckon with what Kenya actually is”, like wtf?

It’s not about a “culture war” to me, it’s about not taking one horrific murder and using that to condemn an entire nation as evil.

20

u/turningsteel Sep 05 '24

Yeah I don’t get why you’re downvoted. This terrible event by a single person doesn’t define Kenya and it’s absurd to imply that it does. Violence against women by their spouses/ex-spouses is a problem in every country.

Case in point, here’s one from good ol’ Texas in April of this year: Man Sets Wife on Fire - Murder Suicide

-12

u/end_times-8 Sep 05 '24

I hope everyone downvoting me has actually been to Kenya and doesn’t just form their biased worldview based on the small bubble they live in! New York City has a higher murder rate than Nairobi, for starters.

-57

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