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By Airam Fernández, from Santiago, Chile

Photos: Presentes Archive/Josean Rivera/AF/Courtesy of the Bahamondes family

Lesbian feminist organizations held a protest at the National Prosecutor's Office in Santiago on the third anniversary of the murder of Nicole Saavedra Bahamondes. While the exact date of her murder is still unknown, the 23-year-old lesbian was kidnapped on June 18, 2016. Her beaten and lifeless body was found on June 25.

Yesterday, at the request of Nicole's family, the organizations submitted a three-page statement outlining several demands for the investigation. These included that the case be classified as a "hate crime of lesbicide," that the State take action, and that the necessary investigations be carried out to identify those responsible. Pilar Medina, spokesperson for the lesbian group Visibles, filed the document with the official records office. The submission was addressed to the Attorney General, Jorge Abbott, and was signed by Visibles, the Lesbofeminist Network, the Lesbian Group Breaking the Silence, the 8M Feminist Coordinating Committee, and Jueves de Lelas (Lesbian Thursdays).

Afterward, Medina read the document to about twenty women gathered outside the Prosecutor's Office. They carried banners and signs with the face of Nicole and other lesbians murdered in various Latin American countries.

“Three years after the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Nicole Saavedra Bahamondes. Three years of constant negligence, silence, and impunity, our anger converges, we mobilize, and confront the State and the institutions that silence and render us invisible year after year ,” the spokesperson for Visibles read aloud.

“ Nicole is killed and tortured many times, even after her death. She is killed by misogynistic men, violated by the State and its indifference, its ineffectiveness, its bureaucracy; she is tortured every time the Prosecutor's Office summons her family and stands them up; she is tortured every time the State promises to do everything possible,” the statement continues, which was read simultaneously yesterday by another group of activists and by Saavedra's family, from the Prosecutor's Office in Quillota, where the case is based.

READ MORE: Two years after the hate crime, Nicole Saavedra is remembered and the prosecutor is relieved of his duties.

The event in Santiago concluded with a collective rendition of Violeta Parra's "La Carta" (The Letter). The lyrics were adapted for the occasion. "They sent me a letter / through the mail early this morning / and in that letter they tell me / that another lesbian has died ," the activists sang a cappella.

READ MORE: Against homophobia and transphobia: lesbians demand equality before the law

No hypothesis, no defendants, no suspects

Nicole was last seen alive on the morning of June 18, 2016. The night before, she had been at a party until dawn, when she left for her home in El Melón. She never arrived. She was missing for a week, until she was found murdered on June 25 in the Los Aromos Reservoir in Limache. According to the autopsy, she died from multiple head and facial traumas. There are still no official hypotheses, suspects, or defendants.

Given the lack of progress in the case, Presentes consulted Ulises Meneses, the prosecutor in charge since last March. He is the third to take over the investigations, after Ymay Ortiz was appointed Director of the Specialized Unit for Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sexual Offenses at the National Prosecutor's Office.

Before her, there was the chief deputy prosecutor of Limache, Juan Emilio Gatica, whom they mention in the statement to demand that he be dismissed "for his continuous negligence" and for considering the crime as a simple homicide.

Limache Prosecutor's Office

After several calls to Meneses' office requesting an in-person or telephone interview, Presentes was instructed by his secretary to send him an email. And so it was done. “I cannot give you any information about this case through this medium. I hope you understand,” was all he replied. He has not spoken to or met with the family either, says María Bahamondes, the victim's cousin, who has been handling the legal proceedings from the beginning.

"We will continue fighting"

“We don’t even know him, we don’t know his position on the case, but we want to tell him right now that we’re going to keep fighting,” Bahamondes told Presentes. He added that if the justice system continues to fail them, the fight will consist of taking to the streets whenever necessary, as they will do in the coming days, with two days of demonstrations in El Melón, planned for June 21 and 25; a march in Quillota on the 22nd, coinciding with the Pride march in Santiago ; and a commemorative festival in Quillota’s Plaza Sin Armas on the 23rd .