The international effort to restore human rights to domestic violence laws

October 28, 9:50 AMDomestic Violence ExaminerTrudy Schuett

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Photo from domestic violence India

Here in the United States, we haven’t heard much about the impact of VAWA-style laws in other countries. In fact, the recognition that domestic violence is not a gender or political issue is dawning worldwide.

In the UK, they are well ahead of Americans, as they have already begun to insist that shelters and domestic violence services that are publicly supported must provide equal services to men and women both.

This should not be surprising as the UK was the place where the best-known early women’s shelter was established by Erin Pizzey in 1971. Although she discovered early on that many of the original clients of her shelter were abusive and violent themselves, by 1984 she’d been forced out by radical feminists – not only from her program but from her home country. Due to the many threats of violence to herself and her family from these women who claimed that women were incapable of abuse, she was forced to take refuge in the United States.

Today things are quite different. Not only are regional programs in the UK beginning to reconsider their approach, but we’re hearing Parliament as well has begun to look at the issue from an apolitical standpoint, free of gender bias.

Pizzey herself was able to return.

In India, the movement has just begun. This month was the first-ever Domestic Violence Awareness Month, with organizations across the country staging protests and appearing in media to state their case.

The issue has particular importance in India, as often a charge of domestic abuse applies to the entire family of the man accused, with parents and siblings facing the same charges.

Yet despite the fact that threats and violence from radical feminists did not ultimately prove effective in the UK, Indian activists are finding themselves in the same situation as Erin Pizzey over 20 years ago.

Uma Challa is the founder of All India Forgotten Women, an organization formed to fight the human rights violations inherent in the “traditional” all-women-are-victims approach to domestic violence. After appearing on television several times debating the issue with a local leader of feminist causes, last week Challa received telephone threats.

She was later attacked by two groups of feminists after a press conference in Hyderabad, but was not apparently seriously injured.

Challa was advised not to travel alone, and to keep her distance from others when involved in person-to-person discussion. Still, she has not allowed these quite real threats against herself to sway her from her cause. In a recent e-mail she said only, “I guess I need to expect surprise attacks like this now.”

She has been told by Indian journalists that her effort “is the most powerful after our freedom movement against the British. I was also told that a very senior communist leader remarked that there has been no movement (including the Maoist movement which he is part of) with so much clarity in the message and goals. The journos told me that the work I am doing is supported by many and opposed by relatively fewer people, but since their stakes in the DV industry are high they are very aggrieved. The risks are significant, but if we are successful, the rewards are going to be incredible.”

 

From the AIFW website:
Women’s empowerment and gender equality are two oft-repeated phrases today. It is sad enough that there are many who take great pride in wearing these labels while remaining completely oblivious of their true import. What is worse is that radical women’s groups and vested interests have successfully subverted the real meaning and purpose of women’s empowerment and gender equality, and are promoting discrimination, injustice and serious human rights abuses in the name of women’s rights.

More Indian websites:
Fight against IPC-498a
Save Indian  Family Foundation

Read about the DVA09 Project here