WUNRN
UGANDA - DOMESTIC VIOLENCE - WIFE
BEATEN BY HUSBAND WITH GOAT SHE PLANNED TO SELL FOR DAUGHTER'S SCHOOL FEES
By Ephraim
Kasozi - November 29, 2012
While many organisations have been set up in a bid to reduce incidences of violence against women, it is still practiced widely.
Despite the efforts to liberate women from some rigid cultures, many still suffer face beatings and other forms of violations of their rights.
Ms Judith Pole is one of these women. Lying on a hospital bed in Pentecostal Assembly of God (PAG) Health Centre in Lira District, Pole is paralysed from her lower limbs downwards. She was admitted a few days ago after being battered by her husband.
The 30-year-old mother of five from Kole, in Lango Sub Region narrates that her husband, currently on the run, beat her using a medium size goat which she had proposed to sell to raise school fees for their daughter in Primary two.
“When our daughter was sent back home for school fees, we did not have the money to pay and I asked him (her husband) to allow me sell one of the goats to pay school fees because we have been working together to get the three goats we had,” Pole said through an interpreter.
She recalls that on September 8, her husband who has since disappeared from the village, came back home drunk and picked the goat which he used to beat her, arguing that she did not have authority over it.
Ms Pole is now in a sad condition. She cannot sleep on her back because of the wounds she sustained there, her buttocks, thighs and legs. She cannot sit or walk and she speaks in a very low voice. She is currently being looked after by her aunt in the hospital.
Dr Andrew Odur of PAG Health Centre says Pole sustained acute spinal injury which led to paralysis in her legs.
“She was brought by Kole District Chairman on the night of November 25 but she was earlier treated from the district referral hospital and the situation did not improve until she was discharged. Pole is anaemic and she needs urgent surgery,” explained Dr Odur, adding the road to recovery is long.
Pole’s incident is one of the hundreds of cases of gender based violence in Kole District and Lango Sub Region as a whole.
Police records indicate that a total of 155 cases comprising physical assault on women and domestic violence were reported from January to September this year in Kole.
The police also indicates that 335 cases comprising domestic violence, aggravated and minor assaults on women were reported from January to December 2011 in the district, a move they said calls for enforcement of the Domestic Violence Act. Pole admission’s to the hospital comes at a time when women are joining the rest of the world to commemorate the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender based Violence, a campaign against violence emphasising that it is a violation of human rights.
Ms Ruth Ojiambo Ochieng, the Executive Director of the women advocacy body, Isis-Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE) attributes Pole’s condition to lack of money to access quality services.
“Our fellow woman is like this because she could not access commercialised health services until a district chairman took up the responsibility to fight for her life. It is a shame to see people dying yet health centres are being extended to sub county levels,” says Ochieng adding the campaign seeks to promote Zero Tolerance to Sexual and Gender Based Violence and restore women’s health in the Lango Sub Region.
She appeals: “This is a wakeup call to the authorities to implement the domestic violence act and arrest that man so that he can be punished heavily as a lesson to other men.”
Ochieng, who led a team of women activists to visit Ms Pole, says the government must put in place mechanisms to ensure effective reporting, referral and handling of cases related to domestic violence at every village in order to curb the vice.
According to Dr Tom Otim, a senior gynaecology consultant based in Mbale Hospital, domestic violence does not only affect the body but also psychologically disturbs the survivor, leading to depression.
“In extreme cases, this violence has led to suicide due to the breakdown in communication which affects productivity in the predominantly agricultural area,” says Dr Otim who attributes this to the effect of war.
Ochieng says the activists plan to raise awareness of the women in Lango sub region on the impact of armed conflict to sexual and reproductive health, and the overall well-being of the affected communities in order to advocate for the reduction of incidences of sexual and gender violence in the Lango sub region
“We need to provide a forum for grassroots women to meet with decision makers at district and national levels, and call for accountability to the recovery of women and girls’ war survivors, and their participation in the recovery programmes,” she says.
According to the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Social Development, 39 per cent of women of over 15 years of age in Uganda have experienced sexual violence, and 59.6 per cent have experienced physical violence: “Such violence has often left survivors partially or even entirely disabled by health complications.”
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