December 10, 2006 |
ALGIERS: The young woman's smile is sad, her greeting weary. Assaulted by
her half brother, Farida took refuge in one of 30 safe houses throughout the
Algerian capital that shelter abused women.
“After she was assaulted,
Farida practically lost her mind,” recalled Myriam Belala, president of a help
group called SOS Women in Trouble. “We saved her from a mental asylum.” Although
a recent government study said women were making inroads professionally in this
mainly Muslim north African country of 33 million, Algeria has come under fire
from rights groups who say poor treatment of women persists.
Last year,
Amnesty International presented a report to the United Nations highlighting “the
Algerian government's failure to protect women against rape, beatings, and
widespread legal and economic discrimination”.
Some 7,400 women filed
domestic violence complaints last year, 1,555 more than in 2004, according to
the law enforcement agency that handles such cases.
“Violence against
women is a pervasive problem in Algeria. It touches all social classes and all
regions, except in the extreme south where the Tuaregs banish men who rape
women,” said Belala, referring to the Berber-speaking nomads who live in the
Sahara region.
Violence overshadowed Algeria for nearly a half-century. A
million lives were lost in the battle for independence from France in 1962, and
another 150,000 to 200,000 people were slaughtered in a brutal civil war that
followed the annulment of 1992 elections, though trouble has subsided since
2003.
But Belala said SOS Woman “broke a taboo” when it was founded some
15 years ago by becoming the first group to publicly denounce a different sort
of violence -- the domestic sort against women.
The group's crisis
workers say domestic abuse cases are on the rise, but many victims fear scandal
so never go to the police.
“However, they talk to us anonymously on the
phone. We get hundreds of calls from women who complain of being sodomized or
forced to do things they are not morally comfortable with,” she said.—AFP
_____________________________________________________________________________