Thousands paid tribute to Rebecca Cheptegei on Saturday in a funeral where she was honor with full military honors following her death last week from injuries suffered in a gasoline attack.
The ceremony took place in Bukwo in, a remote town in Uganda’s northeast near the Kenyan border.
Cheptegei was seriously injured in on September 1 at her home in Eldoret in Kenya when she was allegedly attacked by her former partner Dickson Ndiema Marangach. According to police, Marangach doused Cheptegei and set her on fire and also injured himself in the attack.
She suffered burns to over 80 percent of her body and died of multiple organ failure on September 5 at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret. Marangach was burned on over 30 percent of his body and died of his injuries on September 10.
According to her father, Joseph Cheptegei, his daughter was involved in a property dispute with Marangach after she built a home on land she owned in Trans-Nzoia County near Uganda’s border with Kenya. She built the home in order to be close to better training facilities in the neighboring country. Cheptegei filed three police reports against Marangach, with her last complaint issued on August 30.
Among the scores of mourners at the funeral service were many of Cheptegei fellow long distance runners.
She competed for Uganda in the Paris Olympics in the marathon in August and finished in 44th place, weeks before the attack.
At the funeral, the military played a significant role in the ceremony because Cheptegei, was only 33 when she died, was once a sergeant in Uganda’s army.
Her death sparked an outcry of call for justice in gender-based violence against women in East Africa, especially in Kenya.
Cheptegei is the third long distance runner to die in an alleged attacked from a partner since 2021 as promising female runners can be targeted due to their lucrative careers.
In a social media post, Donald Rukare, the head of Uganda’s Olympic committed condemned the attack as a “cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete.”
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women notes that violence against women in the region is regarded off as a common occurrence. The report also states that 42 percent of women in Kenya, along with 36 percent of men, believe that it is justified for a man to hit a women in some circumstances.
Following a number of speeches at the funeral where Cheptegei was regarded as a national hero, she was given a gun salute by Ugandan military officers.
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