Walk Zara Home silent vigil and protest – end violence against women and girls
On Saturday 27 June 2026, Zara Aleena’s family, friends and supporters will gather at Valentines Park, Ilford, to Walk Zara Home. It’s an annual silent vigil in Zara’s memory, and a protest against male violence.
Zara Aleena was murdered as she walked home in Ilford on 26 June 2022. She was 35 years old. She was a daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, friend and aspiring solicitor.
The walk starts at 1.30pm from the Bethell Avenue entrance of Valentines Park, Ilford, IG1 4UX. Please wear white as a sign of remembrance, solidarity and peace.
The annual Walk Zara Home vigil is a moment of remembrance, solidarity and collective protest. It honours Zara’s life, her name, and the lives of all women and girls who have been harmed, threatened or killed by male violence.
Zara’s murder exposed serious failures across the justice system. Her family continues to call for accountability, prevention and lasting change so that women and girls can live freely and safely.
Zara’s family said:
We walk because Zara should have been able to get home safely.
We walk because violence against women and girls is preventable and must be stopped.
We walk because silence cannot be the answer.
This is a peaceful walk, but it is not passive. It is grief, witness, protest and a call for change.
All are welcome to attend.
Event: Walk Zara Home
Date: Saturday 27 June 2026
Time: 1.30pm
Location: Valentines Park, Bethell Avenue Entrance, Ilford, IG1 4UX
Dress: Please wear white if possible
Hashtag: #WalkZaraHome
Featured image supplied
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Male violence is directed largely at other men. This march does not reflect reality; and, as ever with much of modern feminism, it treats adult women as if they are children: fragile, naive, weak. Without the strong, courageous women of the Suffragette/Suffragist movements, modern women would not even have votes.
Are you okay?
I’m appalled by this comment which trivializes violence against women in particular relating to an event in remembrance of one young woman.
While I most certainly advocate feminism and at 75 was most certainly a women;s libber way back in the early 70s I also spent my life as a social worker dealing with among other things Domestic abuse and am mindful that much of that abuse happens after alcohol fuelled attendance at football games.
I worked in an emergency service where every Sat evening our phones would ring off the wall with calls from various police stations in our area.
Currently in politics every woman is subjected to more abuse and threats online . I consider myself a strong woman and would always advocate for women to be strong but our society includes men and women who will not always achieve this.
Violence in any shape or form needs to be called out and I particularly abhor the current racist protests and attacks from far right groups many of whom are themselves perpetrators of domestic violence.
So I hope there is a good turnout today for this annual remembrance of Zara.
Demanding an end to violence against women and girls is fine. Nothing in my comment trivialises those offences. However, I have yet to read an article about such violence which places it in the correct context of violence by men – which, as every statistic about it from anywhere in the world will show, is inflicted in the majority on other men. Make a survey of media coverage of male violence, whether in news items, comment pieces, TV dramas or films, and you will see that woman-as-victim is highlighted vastly more prominently than when men are victims. It will be far more effective to look at why men are trained into violence, and counteract the prevalence of women being falsely portrayed as fragile.
Zara was a strong courageous young woman who was confident to walk home alone, she was not fragile, naive or weak.
Very true. That applies equally to men who are seriously injured or killed by other men; but media coverage of that violence is very differently written. For example, injuries to men are viewed in the media as less problematic or life-changing because men’s bodies are somehow more impervious. It is the media and much of modern feminism that portray women as weaker in every respect (physically, emotionally, mentally) and all men as stronger, which is not the reality.