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Set Ablaze by Husbands or
In-Laws, Abused Women Struggle to Survive
The fear of stigma prevents many women from
talking about violence that is inflicted on them by a husband, in-laws or other
family members. A group, above, meets to talk about their experiences. PUSHPA
ACHANTA/WFS
By Pushpa Achanta on July 07, 2015
BENGALURU — “The stove exploded in the
kitchen,” they say. “Scalding hot water fell on me by accident while I was
making tea,” or “I didn’t realize that my clothes caught fire while I was
cooking.” These are some of the common explanations from women admitted to the
burns ward of Victoria Hospital in the high-tech capital of the Indian State of
Karnataka. Sadly, these statements almost always act as a cover-up for the
truth, which is both horrific and heartbreaking.
Zarina Khatoon was set on fire by her
husband, although the 38-year-old mother of two told everyone that the stove
had burst at home. It was several weeks before she could muster the courage to
narrate the real story and register a formal complaint. “Once a woman dares to
complain against her family there are consequences. One stands to lose
everything — respect, family support, and even one’s own children,” she said.
Shocking as it may sound, in India —
regardless of region, class, community or age — married women are being burned
alive on the flimsiest pretexts, from being thought unattractive or cooking
unappetizing meals to bringing insufficient dowry into the marriage, expressing
opinions freely, talking to a neighbour or giving birth to daughters: anything
and everything can infuriate and incite the husband or the in-laws.
Bride burning, as this occurrence is called,
accounts for the death of nearly one woman every hour in India — more than
8,000 women a year, says the National Crime Records Bureau, which reported that
8,233 women, many of them new brides, were killed in dowry-related deaths in
2012; in 2013, statistics indicate that 8,083 died this way. Unfortunately,
because this crime takes place inside the home, it limits the scope of
intervention by authorities, as it is a considered a personal problem.
It was the fear of stigma and social
ostracism that prevented Asha from talking about what had actually happened the
night her husband decided to get rid of her by setting her on fire. Sathya, an
activist with Vimochana, a women’s rights organization in Bengaluru (formerly
Bangalore) that has been assisting distressed girls and women and advocating
for their rights for decades, said: “For Asha, who is now in her forties, it
has been a long and difficult struggle to find her feet again. It was 10 years
back that her husband set her on fire right in front of their daughter. Over
the years, Asha has found the strength to forge on for the sake of the young
girl.”
Asha struggled to survive for weeks. She has
never regained her voice. Today, she communicates through her daughter, Jyoti.
“The sprightly adolescent, who is currently pursuing her pre-university
studies, often becomes the voice of her mother,” Sathya said. “She was very
small when the episode occurred and watched her mother fighting for life.
“As Asha recovered with the help of extensive
treatment and counseling, she gradually gained the courage and confidence to
share her story through her daughter,” Sathya added. She has observed many
women like Asha pull themselves together despite the odds. “She has remained
alive for her girl and has managed to secure a job that has helped her become
independent even though it may be insufficient to make ends meet.”
How will I sustain myself and my children?
Who will pay for my treatment? Will anyone give a disfigured person a job?
These are questions that often hold back the Ashas and Zarinas from standing up
for themselves. “In a society like ours, which is obsessed with beauty and
physical appearance, what chance do women like me have to gain respectable employment?”
Zarina asks.
She is not wrong. Burn survivors have low
self-esteem when they enter the job market, and most prospective employers are
not comfortable with either their appearance or their circumstances, making it
doubly difficult for them to find suitable work. For those who do secure a
reasonable job, their long-term medical treatment gets in the way. Often they
must take short or extended breaks, which employers may not allow.
A combination of justice and adequate
rehabilitation can enable a survivor to regain control of her life and destiny.
But neither avenue is easy to obtain, especially if the woman happens to be
from a lower caste, a tribal or a minority community. Yashoda, founder of the
Karnataka Dalit Mahila Vedike, a forum assisting survivors of caste and gender
violence, has championed the cause of Dalit (formerly known as untouchable)
women for years.
She recalls an incident where concerted
action successfully sent a perpetrator to jail. “In 2009, when a Dalit woman
had spurned the sexual advances of a man from the dominant [higher] caste, he
retaliated by attacking her violently and setting her on fire,” Yashoda says.
“After committing the crime, the man simply vanished. A few concerned passersby
helped her and she was able to hold on for four days before she died, but the
police had been able to take her statement about what happened.”
Yashoda’s survivors’ forum collaborated with
other human-rights groups to investigate the incident and complaints were
registered at the local police station, followed by large-scale protests. Not
only was the man arrested — the case is still in court — but the state
government also compensated the family of the victim and promised that the
education of her minor children would be supported by the state.
Such a rally to ensure justice does not
happen regularly. Donna Fernandes, a co-founder of Vimochana, which has
advocated for a separate ward for female burns survivors in Victoria Hospital,
much more needs to be done. She said it was “absolutely essential” that laws
passed to deal with domestic violence, including the Protection of Women from
Domestic Violence Act 2005, must deal with women who have been set on fire by
their husbands or in-laws. Such women must by law receive financial and other
support for medical care, including physiological and psychological counseling,
especially if they have sustained grievous burns.
It is the never-say-die attitude of survivors
that really keeps them going. Sylvia, 33, a vegetable vendor in Bengaluru, has
been to hell and back. “But I refuse to dwell in the past,” she said. “Life has
been anything but simple ever since my husband doused me in kerosene and set me
on fire. I take each day as a new challenge. Though I am educated, I did not
get a job anywhere. So I am selling vegetables to earn a few hundred rupees a
day to support my sons, who are studying in a government school. We live with
my mother, a daily wager, who contributes to household expenses as well.”
Women like Sylvia give Fernandes the strength
to keep up the fight. “Each day, from Bengaluru alone, we get four to five
cases of women being burnt using kerosene,” she said. “Does that mean we ban
the sale of kerosene? No. What we all have to work towards is changing
mind-sets and traditions that turn seemingly normal people into monsters.”
© Women’s Feature Service
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60706-6/fulltext
Volume 373, No. 9671,
p1230–1231, 11 April 2009
Gender
Inequality & Fire-Related Deaths in India
In The
Lancet today, Prachi Sanghavi and colleagues1 suggest
that burns are an important public health concern and a major cause of
preventable death in India. Their study shows that most of these deaths
(106 000 of 163 000 in 2001) occurred in women, mostly aged 15–34 years. The
problem of fire-related deaths and injuries, however, has been undocumented or
poorly documented. Sanghavi's lowest estimates for fire-related deaths were
more than three times higher than those reported by the police.
In a
study of women's health priorities from an analysis of 2005 mortality estimates
and disease burden from the Global Burden of Disease study,2 burns
in young women were common in southeast Asia. This study identified key areas
of concern for women by age group and by WHO regions. Burns rated seventh in
the top ten causes of deaths and disability-adjusted life years (which is used
to estimate the burden of disease in a population due to both disability and
premature death) for women aged 15–44 years. Not surprisingly, different regions
vary considerably. Overall, injuries were a substantial proportion of deaths in
women in all regions, especially in young women (15–44 years of age) in the
western Pacific, European, and southeast Asian regions. The specific
distribution of mortality from different types of injuries, however, varied by
region, with burns being the third cause of death for women aged 15–44 years in
southeast Asia, followed by self-inflicted injuries. In addition to deaths,
injuries and burns can lead to severe disability and long-term sequelae. Rates
of morbidity and mortality due to injuries are probably underestimated in the
Global Burden of Disease database and in one of the datasets used by Sanghavi
and colleagues, because many injuries, even when severe, do not result in
hospital admissions and are therefore often not reported and counted.
Sanghavi
and colleagues indicate that burn-related injuries and deaths in India are
likely to be caused by: kitchen accidents related to use of kerosene and
flammability of garments; self-immolation or suicides; and homicides related to
domestic violence. All are plausible and current data do not allow any definite
conclusions; therefore, more research is needed to address this point. Some
evidence suggests that intimate partner and domestic violence could have an
important role. Domestic violence (physical, sexual, and emotional) and other
forms of sexual violence and coercion are well known to be substantial and
widespread, with women more likely than men to be abused by partners and other
family members.3 In
India, population-based studies have reported domestic violence by partners and
other family members. For example, 25%, 20%, and 16% of women aged 15–49 years
in Lucknow, Trivandrum, and Vellore, respectively, had reported physical
violence by an intimate partner in the past 12 months; and 35%, 43%, and 31%,
respectively, had reported ever having experienced this violence.4 Health
consequences of this violence include several acute and chronic conditions,5, 6 but
acute injuries and long-term sequelae of abuse are under-reported. These
studies are unlikely to document domestic violence in the form of burns because
many burnt women might not survive or might be too disabled to participate in
these surveys. Studies of femicide from several countries have also shown that
40–70% of female murder victims had been killed by intimate partners.4 Although
doctors can assess whether the cause of burns is likely to be an accident, a
suicide attempt, or a murder (in burns due to stove burst, the midriff is
affected, whereas when kerosene is poured on the body burns are spread from
head to toe), in India it is often difficult for women to disclose domestic
abuse because of concerns about the future care of their children or the
presence of the husband or mother-in-law (Deosthali P, Center for Enquiry into
Health Allied Themes, Mumbai, India; personal communication).
Suicide
and suicide attempts in women are also associated with violence by an intimate
partner or other family member.7 A way in which women
attempt suicide in India is by burning themselves; other common methods include
consumption of poisonous substances, such as pesticides or insecticides, or
kerosene. Although data are difficult to obtain, small community studies in
India have shown that dowry-related violence is important in bride burning and
deaths of women. These deaths are reported as suicides, but are also likely to
be homicides.8 Sanghavi
and colleagues report that the National Crime Records Bureau of India
documented almost 9000 suicides by fire and self-immolation in both sexes in
2005, and 6787 dowry deaths.
Sanghavi
and colleagues' findings show that fire-related injuries and deaths are an
important public health problem in India, which is also probably true in some
other countries in southeast Asia. Many, if not most, of these deaths are
preventable. Although Sanghavi analysed existing data on deaths in depth, more
research (qualitative and quantitative) is needed to better understand the
extent of this problem. For cooking-stove accidents, cooking modalities and
other modifications to improve safety are an urgent intervention. For domestic
violence, primary prevention strategies—including addressing discrimination
against women and girls, and other social norms that make this form of violence
regarded as normal and acceptable—should be a priority. Furthermore, the public
health system has a key role in training health professionals on
violence-related issues, so that they are equipped to respond to specific
needs, including mental health issues, of survivors. Accurate documentation of
the injuries, the incident, and the care provided is crucial in seeking
justice.
My
views in this Comment are not necessarily those of WHO. I declare that I have
no conflicts of interest.
References – See Website