WUNRN
Canada:
Abused South Asian Women in Canada Support Program SAFSS
By Naunidhi Kaur
Toronto (Women's Feature Service) - Harminder Dhaliwal, 35, immigrated to
Canada from Chandigarh in 2006 when she got married to Baljinder Singh
Dhaliwal. "I knew that it was his second marriage but he seemed like a
decent guy," she says. "It was an arranged match and I knew that he
drove his own taxi in Toronto and had a fully-paid off house in Brampton. I
felt my future would be secure." But the illusion of security became a
nightmare for Harminder when she arrived there. Her husband was abusive and
would hit her over small incidences: too much or too less salt in the meal; her
failure to answer the home phone when he called; and even if she asked what he
considered were too many questions.
Tolerating his behaviour, Harminder tried to make her marriage work. "I
questioned myself and thought maybe I was doing something wrong," she
recalls. However, after her daughter was born the situation got increasingly
worse. "My husband got me a one-way ticket to India three months after my
daughter was born. He said he would come to get me soon. I stayed in Chandigarh
for three months. He did not call me and when I did, he made excuses. Everyone
back home advised me to go back and fight for my marriage," recalls
Harminder, as her two-year-old daughter seated in a stroller sleeps through
most of the counselling sessions that she attends at the South Asia Family
Support Services (SAFSS). A Markham, Ontario-based charitable organisation, SAFSS,
provides assistance to women suffering abuse. Says Harminder, "I try and
come here during her nap times as I have nowhere to leave her."
SAFSS - http://www.safss.com/
Harminder recalls that while she was in India, her husband sold off their
Brampton house to his sister-in-law for US$5. (This is a token amount for a
property that could well cost $30,0000. Abusive men think that they can get
away with anything - that they will divorce their wife and get away with paying
anything to her.) Back in Ontario, Harminder is fighting for her right to stay
in her matrimonial home with her daughter. "I am going ahead with my
separation and divorce. I will not let go of my right to stay in my matrimonial
home. My husband thinks he can get away with anything but I am going to give up
my rights that easily," she says. Under Canadian law, after divorce the
property owned by the husband is distributed equally between the spouses.
For Harminder, who has a History honors degree from Punjab University, fighting
for her rights against her husband is an uphill task. Language and finances are
her main worries. She uses an interpreter when attending court hearings as she
finds the Canadian accent difficult to understand. "I have received a
certificate from the Legal Aid. I am now going to court to fight this
out." Legal Aid, an independent but publicly funded and publicly
accountable non-profit corporation, helps people with low-income access legal
help. It also helps people like Harminder to remain hopeful of a better future.
As Harminder puts it, "Just because my marriage did not go well does not
mean all is over for me in Canada. I am sponsoring my parents so that they can
take care of my daughter while I work."
SAFSS gets many cases like Harminder's in which abusive husbands control the
women in a marriage and then try to get out of the relationship without any
financial and emotional liabilities. Zarina Sherazee, Manager, Family, Health
and Volunteer Development, SAFSS, explains, "The challenge I face in
counselling women from South Asia is that they are not aware of how deeply they
are abused by their partners. Coming from traditional South Asian backgrounds
some of my clients try to cover up the emotional abuse that they take for
years." Sherazee gets phone calls as well as visits from 300 such women
each year. She has been counselling for 20 years. The phone in her Markham
office keeps ringing, as she shuffles between the four lines on the PBX,
listening to calls of distress from women who find it hard to get help in an
alien country.
Over the years Sherazee has found that clients who are angry with their
situation of emotional, physical and financial abuse are the ones who try and
get out of the situation sooner. "At the same time, there are many women
who stay in a situation of abuse for 30 years and not say anything," she
says.
More often, women don't report because of fear or because they think their
culture teaches them to be resilient when faced with abuse. "Their uncles,
aunts, fathers and brothers have always taught them that after marriage they
have to take the good with the bad." And women continue to take the
beatings as a part of the bad. "I try to teach the women to not be a
victim of abuse but take responsibility for protecting themselves," says
Sherazee.
Another challenge that abused women face is that even after their marriage
ends, they have to deal with vindictive spouses, who loathe to see them settled
down and content. Zahida Khan, 42, found that even after divorce, her husband
did not want to let her lead a new, non-abusive, happy life with her children.
Khan, who was divorced three years ago, says that her husband's remarriage
doesn't bother her. "I don't really care about that. He is out of my life and
I am very happy with the situation. However, even now he stalks me. The other
day when I was going to the mosque he came and slowed down the car and started
abusing me. Then he sped off." Ask her why her husband does this she
explains in Punjabi, "He cannot see me happy with the children. He used to
control everything... my life, what I did, my identity... when we were married.
Now he sees me out and about leading a happy life and this irks him no end. I
know that is the reason he cannot live in peace."
Control and power thus remain issues in abusive relationships - much after the
relationship ceases to exist. This is what is common between Khan's and
Dhaliwal's lives despite their differing South Asian cultures. While the men
bristle with annoyance, the women resolve to move on by attending support group
sessions, share their tales, food and survival tips. According to Sherazee, the
combination of individual counselling and the SAFSS support group sessions,
which are held every Wednesday, has helped empower abused women. Attending the
sessions, the women who hail from Afghanistan, Iran, India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka learn that they are not the only ones going through an
abusive relationship. The close interaction, pot-luck sessions, and conversations
in their mother tongues on life's simple things such as tips on skin care
during the winter or information on the new courses at a community college,
give the women the confidence and the knowledge that they are not alone.
"If you think of good things, good things will happen to you. Stay
positive and dream of a brilliant future for yourself and it will come
true," assures Sherazee to the women attending the counselling session.
(The names of abuse victims have been changed to protect their identity.)
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