Well-known Melbourne DJ and activist Pheona Donohoe knows the eerie shadows of Mexico's Cd, Juarez only too well. Living just across the border in El Paso, a city known for employing thousands of women from the Juarez district, news of the latest bloody slaying flows thick and fast. A 24-year-old waitress is the latest victim, found strangled and dumped in an overgrown empty lot just three months ago. Far from an isolated case, Amnesty International estimates over 400 women have bee murdered here since the early nineties. Yet in a population of only two million, the estimated annual number of deaths in alarmingly hight. And so are the unresolved cases. "No one knows why the crimes remain unresolved," says Pheona. "The police are suspected to be involved, which is why the state government is so slow to act and legally the federal government could only step in once a witness gave evidence of organ trafficking." Although this evidence remains unproven, many deaths are known cases of domestic violence, and just as many women fall prey to random and serial killings.

Pheona was warned never to travel alone in Cd, Juarez, yet hundreds of women do so every single day to get to work. Limited transport services are unreliable and remote, and locals are often forced to walk the streets, sometimes for kilometres at all hours of the night. "This is when many of the murders occur," adds Donohoe. "Yet no one wants to take responsibility. The American companies subcontract the work to these factories, so they don't care.

One woman was three minutes late for work one day, and the doors were closed and she was sent home and on her return was abducted and raped, but because there is such a high number of people available for employment, anyone who makes a fuss just gets fired." Only too familiar with predators, Pheona spent a year in El Paso fleeing a suicide stalker in hometown Melbourne. Outraged by the lack of resources and support fro Cd. Juarez women, Donohoe is back in Australia to present two events to raise money for local charities. "Knowing the lengths the Australian government is going to right now to protect women of crime just makes me so angry that the Mexican government have so little respect for their people. It makes me even more determined to ensure these women get the best protection they can."
-Crystal James