AUCKLAND (Pacnews) — The Pacific region faces daunting problems of widespread and entrenched sexual abuse and violence against women and children, says a Fijian women’s rights worker.
Shamima Ali, coordinator at Fiji Women’s Crisis Center, was in Auckland to speak at a breakfast meeting to mark International Women’s Day.
Ali said violence against women and children is prevalent yet mostly went unpunished in Pacific communities, “whether it is in the home where a man beats his wife and children forcing them to live a life of fear, whether it is at community or village level where the pastor or village leader tells the woman to be a good wife and tolerate the beatings, or whether it is a national level where a politician or an MP proclaims that if women stuck to their traditional role, violence would not happen.”
She said the response by family and community members to women complaining of violence is based on judgmental attitudes and traditional beliefs about a woman’s position in society.
“Why did you answer back, what were you doing out at that time of night ... you really should have been home looking after the kids.”
In Vanuatu chiefs and some parliamentarians have lobbied against the family protection order bill because they felt it legitimizes divorce and immorality.
“To them women standing up to the violence affecting them is a threat to the patriarchal institutions which they represent.”
Ali said the Fijian military has in many cases interfered in domestic violence cases, but not in support of the victim.
Domestic violence in the Pacific is “quite grave” given that WHO put the range worldwide as between 10 and 69 percent, yet in Fiji an estimated 66 percent of women had experienced it.
There is also anecdotal evidence that incest is a significant problem in Pacific countries and work is needed to open that problem to public debate.
Research by the Fijian Women’s Crisis Center found 13 percent reported being raped and 44 percent of women have reported being hit while pregnant.
Ali said the largest group of victims are aged 11-15 years and under-reporting of sexual assaults was widespread.
When victims seek justice, family members often step in to pressure victims not to tarnish the family image or break up the family unit, thereby protecting the offender.
Ali described a case in Fiji involving a teenage girl who was forced into a taxi by a man, taken to a plantation and raped.
When the case went to court her father asked a judge to dismiss a charge as the perpetrator had agreed to marry his daughter. The judge agreed but warned the man that he had “better fulfil his promise” or he would reopen the case.
A Fijian public prosecutor reported that appeals in sexual assault cases succeeded about 90 percent of the time compared to about 30 percent for other cases.