“We thought she dropped her phone and she got kidnapped,” Aiia’s heartbroken sister Noor Maasarwe told The Age. “But later on, I saw on the news they had found a body. I was praying that it was not her.”
In the family’s home town, Baqa al-Gharbiyye, in Israel, about 1000 people gathered at the local mosque to mourn the cherished young woman. Her Shanghai- based father, Saeed, who’d been due to have a holiday in Melbourne with Aiia in two weeks, instead arrived to identify her body.
On Jan. 18, he attended a candlelit vigil for his daughter at Victoria’s State Parliament joined by hundreds of Melburnians, disturbed that yet another young woman had been killed in their midst. “Our heart is aching for you, Aiia, an obviously beautiful soul taken too soon,” read one note, among a sea of flowers.
“She, all the time, smiled. She loved the people,” Saeed said through tears, as strangers lined up to hug him.
At the weekend, thousands marched in rallies across Australia calling for greater protection of women, many carrying placards honouring Aiia Maasarwe.
“I am so thoroughly sick to my stomach of men murdering women,” Tom Meagher, whose wife, Jill Meagher, was murdered in 2012, tweeted on Jan. 17. (In June, 22-year-old comedienne Eurydice Dixon was raped and murdered in Melbourne after she’d been heading home from a stand-up comedy gig. In March 2015, schoolgirl Masa Vukotic, 17, was stabbed to death in a Melbourne park.)
“The human cost of male violence is staggering, the incalculable social trauma and human misery it engenders is soul destroying,” Meagher wrote.
Aiia’s uncle Abed Kittani told the ABC his family remain crushed at their loss. “The tragedy and horror isn’t easy to bear,” he said. “Instead of coming home with a diploma, she’s coming home in a coffin.”
Need help? Call Lifeline on 131 114, visit www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/get-help-home, or call beyondblue on 1300 224 636.
If you or someone you know is affected by sexual assault or family violence, call the 1800RESPECT hotline or visit www.1800respect.org.au/. You can also call the Domestic Violence Hotline on 1800 656 463.
If you or someone have something to report, contact Crime Stoppers, call 1800 333 00.
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