Source: The Guardian
By Amelia Gentlemen —
When Anna Zhavnerovich wrote about a beating she received from her boyfriend, it triggered a huge reaction. Now there are signs of a political shift in attitudes regarding the campaign to identify domestic violence as a crime
‘People were surprised it was happening in young, fashionable circles’ … Anna Zhavnerovich at the W-O-S magazine offices in Moscow. Photograph: Maria Pleshkova/Demotix. For the Muslim Times’ collection on women rights please click here
Anna Zhavnerovich went to the police a week after she says her boyfriend beat her unconscious, determined to make sure he was arrested and brought to justice. She was surprised by some of the questions the Moscow police officers asked her when she recounted what had happened, her face still painfully swollen and discoloured.
“They asked me why I didn’t have any children,” she remembers. “They asked me if I was married.” Beneath their line of questioning was the suggestion that somehow the attack was her fault.
They told her that they would investigate, but a few weeks later she received a letter informing her that the case had been dropped. Her ex-boyfriend had not been questioned and no further action was proposed. When she tried to hire a lawyer to start a private suit, she was told that the police had lost her files.
Zhavnerovich, 28, a journalist at a fashionable Moscow-based online lifestyle website W-O-S, chose instead to write an article about what had happened to her. Its publication last month attracted huge attention, highlighting an issue that for decades has been an almost unmentionable taboo. Zhavnerovich was bombarded with hundreds of emails and Facebook posts from women who wanted to tell her that they, too, had been beaten up by partners and struggled to get the authorities to register a complaint.
“I think people were surprised to read that this was happening in young, fashionable Moscow circles – not something to do with alcoholics in some remote, backward village somewhere. That’s why it triggered such a huge reaction from the public,” Zhavnerovich said. “Judging by the responses I have had, the scale of the problem is enormous.”
The interest her account provoked chimed with a political shift in attitudes to this issue, which is finally edging towards the political mainstream. After decades of failed attempts to draft legislation that identifies domestic violence as a crime, politicians at the Moscow Duma hope this session of parliament to debate a new law, which will make it easier for victims to prosecute their attackers, and introduce a series of preventative measures, such as restraining orders and behavioural therapy for offenders.
Politicians have already considered (and abandoned) more than 50 draft versions of a law on domestic violence since the early 1990s, but this time there is muted optimism from campaigners, who say a series of high-profile cases are finally bringing this hidden issue into the open, strengthening demand for improvements in the way complaints from women are handled.
“If he beats you, he loves you,” goes a well-known Russian proverb, a wry articulation of an acceptance that being hit by your husband is simply an everyday part of human relationships. Marina Pisklakova, head of ANNA, a Moscow-based charity which has been fighting for improved support for victims of domestic violence since the 1990s, points out that the violence itself is a global problem, but that Russia is unusual in having such inadequate legislation.The current debates over how Russia deals with domestic violence reflect changing attitudes to women, in a country where family values remain conservative. It touches on a perplexing Russian paradox – that while the Russian government has long promoted equality in the work place, attitudes towards women remain patriarchal. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which was considering the issue of domestic violence, expressed concern in 2010 at the “state party’s repeated emphasis on the role of women as mothers and caregivers”.
“We desperately need the legislation because when there is no legislation, it makes it look like this is something that is tolerated by society, so the legislation in itself will be a powerful statement that this is not something that is acceptable – and I think that will have an impact on behaviour,” she said.
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