WUNRN
ARMENIA
- POLITICIANS ACT AS SILENCE BREAKS ON
DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE - SURVEYS SHOW PREVALENCE
Politicians
act as beaten and abused women at last begin to break their silence.
By
Gayane Abrahamyan in Yerevan - 2 April 2010
Domestic
violence is rife in Armenia, with a third of women saying they have been abused
at home - but at least it is now being talked about.
In the
course of a survey conducted by the United Nations, women were handed pictures
of a crying and a smiling face and asked to say which of them they identified
with. Seventy per cent of the women surveyed chose the crying face.
Karine, 45,
is one woman who picked out the unhappy face. She is from the town of Abovyan,
some 18 kilometres from Yerevan, and married a young man she met when a student
in the capital. She now says the only day of her marriage she wants to remember
is her wedding day.
“After that,
everything smashed into smithereens, it turned into hell on earth,” she said.
“There was
no day without a beating. When he was drunk he did not even remember when I was
pregnant, then he beat me in front of the children. Sometimes he made them join
him in the beatings.
“You maybe
cannot see the bruises on my body, but the injury to my spirit, the inner
wounds can never be healed. I cannot forget this and I am angry with myself
that I don’t have the strength to kill myself.”
A mother of
three, she tried to kill herself twice but was saved by her children both
times.
“I hanged
myself in the barn, knowing that my children were playing hide and seek next
door. But Mher, my 10-year-old, came in to hide and started shouting. He lifted
me up by my feet, until they came in and got me down. But after that nothing
changed, the beating and humiliation continued with new force,” she said.
She gave up
her children to an orphanage to save them from their father and now lives
alone. Through this two decades of torture, she never appealed to the police
for help, saying that would have been shameful – a position that appears to be
common among Armenian women.
“Women still
only with great caution talk about this theme. They do not only avoid it, but
deny it, and in some cases think it is justified,” said Gina Sargizova, head of
a UN programme for fighting domestic violence.
According to
the survey conducted by the programme, only 15 per cent of victims were
prepared to reveal details of violence against them.
“Women
refuse to speak about this theme, however, with the help of various indirect
questions we managed to reveal that this problem is pretty massive,” Sargizova
said.
“The main
reason why women cannot put an end to this situation and get a divorce is
shame. Financial dependence is also an important factor, but shame remains in
first place.”
According to
an Amnesty International Survey from 2008, a third of Armenian women have been
beaten in the home, and two-thirds have come under psychological pressure.
Other surveys confirmed that at least a quarter of the violence took place in
front of children.
Sargizova
said, however, that society did seem to be moving towards a greater awareness
of the extent of the problem.
“From a
complete denial, when, at the lowest and the highest parts of society, there
was an insistence that such a problem simply did not exist, we have reached an
acceptance of the existence of a problem, and also a search for a way to solve
it,” she said.
It is a view
shared by Susanna Vardanyan, director of the Centre for Women’s Rights, which
was founded 12 years ago. The centre initiated a draft law on domestic
violence, which has been examined by officials from relevant ministries and the
police.
“Five years
ago, we could not even have said that. High-ranking officials would just have
laughed and said such a problem did not exist in Armenia, that these were just
isolated cases but now many are even ready to support the adoption of the law,”
she said.
Two years
ago, the government approved a programme to create shelters and to give
assistance to female victims of violence, although the implementation of the
programme was postponed because of the financial crisis. Up to now, such steps
were only taken by non-governmental and donor organisations.
The United
States government agency USAID helped create four refuges in 2001, but they did
not survive the end of its programme, and only the shelter run by the Centre
for Women’s Rights still exists.
In February
this year, the government agreed that a commission would be set up to research
how to improve sexual equality.
“After the
adoption of a law on gender equality, it will be a lot easier to make changes
in the legal field, and also to adopt laws making domestic violence a criminal
offence. We are currently at the beginning of the road, although the existence
of political will is important,” Sargizova said.
Such an
initiative appears to be winning acceptance outside the circle of women’s
activists.
“From a
historical point of view, we are a civilised country, but today there is no
gender equality in our society, and in many spheres women have been stripped of
the possibility of realising their rights,” Artsvik Minasyan, a parliament
deputy from the Dashnaktsutyun party, said.
And even
priests have come on board – an important consideration in the oldest Christian
country on earth. Some 20 priests, who took part in the UN’s work on gender
equality, have begun to preach not only of the importance of maintaining the
family, but also have used bible quotations to argue that men and women are
equal, and violence is unacceptable.
“Of course,
this problem exists and women even appeal to us for help finding a solution,
and it was necessary for us to get additional knowledge,” Father Vigen
Martirosyan said.
“Immunity
gives birth to crime. A real man will never raise his hand to a woman, and I
repeat this in all my sermons and private talks.”
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