Armine Sahakyan: Sad saga of domestic abuse in the former Soviet Union

That is double the figure in the United States, which has twice Russia’s population.

The Russian murder figure underscores the widespread problem of domestic abuse in the former Soviet Union.

Lack of domestic-abuse laws in most of the countries makes it difficult for victims to protect themselves from violent husbands and boyfriends without being killed or beaten so badly they suffer permanent injury.

A major contributor to domestic abuse is a long-held attitude that household violence is a family matter that social-service agencies and police shouldn’t get involved in.

Still another contributor is a lack of battered-women’s shelters, which means that many victims have to return to the homes they fled to face more violence.

Accurate figures on domestic violence in the former Soviet Union are hard to come by, but estimates are remarkably similar from country to country: About one in three women in many countries say they have experienced domestic abuse.

Women’s Rights Center, a non-governmental organization here in Armenia whose work includes helping battered women, said its surveys indicate that 30 percent of Armenian women have suffered domestic violence.

“Every third woman in Belarus has been beaten at least once in her life by her spouse or sexual partner,” according to that country’s YWCA.

And 30 percent of married Russian women have experienced domestic abuse, surveys indicate.

Despite these stark numbers, the only countries in the former Soviet Union with domestic-abuse laws are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine. And their laws are either flawed or rarely enforced, women’s-rights groups say.

The rest of the countries in the former Soviet Union handle domestic violence under other statutes – such as laws on assault and battery, and murder.

The problem with that approach is that most of the time police refuse to file assault-and-battery charges unless a victim suffers a beating so severe that she requires hospitalization.

Moscow beautician Ekaterina Vinogorova’s case is an example. In 2011 her then-husband broke her nose and several ribs.

But “under the Russian criminal code, those injuries weren’t severe enough to warrant the police prosecuting him for assault,” Bloomberg News said in a story about Russian domestic abuse.

Vinogorova’s only recourse was to file a “domestic-beating” civil suit against her husband, whom she has since divorced.

The court awarded her just $800.

Human-rights and women’s-rights activists began trying to convince Russia’s parliament to pass a domestic-violence law almost two decades ago, in the late 1990s. There’s still no law in sight.

The legislation that activists drafted would require police to file charges in any assault against a woman, not just a severe one.

It would also give women the ability to seek restraining orders against abusive husbands.

Although a flawed domestic-abuse law is better than none, some countries’ statutes are toothless, women’s-rights activists say.

Kazakhstan’s, for example, limits a batterer’s punishment to a fine.

The legislation needs to be amended so that abusers face imprisonment, Gulashara Abdykalikova, head of the National Commission on Women, said in 2013.

Many batterers who are fined actually skip out on the judgment – so there’s no punishment at all. In fact, “it often happens that the woman who was the victim” ends up having to pay the fine.

Kyrgyzstan passed a domestic-abuse law in 2003 but it’s rarely enforced, women’s-rights activists there say.

Many Kyrgyz – both women and men – don’t know the law exists because neither the government nor news organizations have spread the word.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the countries in the former Soviet Union where the long-held view of domestic violence being a family matter has discouraged many women from leaving a batterer or reporting abuse to the police.

That mentality seems to be particularly prevalent in Central Asia and the Caucasus, although all Russian-speaking countries have long had a saying that “if you don’t beat your wife, you don’t love her.”

Gulipa Kadirkulova, a domestic-abuse victim in Kyrgyzstan’s capital of Bishkek, fled to one of the few battered-women’s shelters in the country to escape her husband’s beatings.

She couldn’t go to relatives for help, she said, because extended family members “take a woman’s suffering as something normal according to old traditions.”

In fact, her relatives condemned her flight because it’s considered shameful for a woman to leave her husband and home in Kyrgyzstan, no matter what the provocation.

A few years ago Uzbekistan started a national campaign to preserve the family. While the goal is commendable, the program has actually worked against battered women.

That’s because the government has told social-service agencies and police that they need to help keep families intact at all cost. So when a woman tries to get out of an abusive marriage, the very public servants who ought to be helping push her to stay in the relationship.

“Because there is a state policy aimed at preserving families and reducing the number of divorces, women complaining of domestic violence are usually sent back to their homes,” said Dillorom Abdulloeva, a member of Tashabbus, a group of young attorneys promoting the rule of law in Uzbekistan.

At the same time, when battered women go to court to seek a divorce, the judge often refuses to grant one, she added.

“This situation increases the likelihood that women and their children will be abused again and again,” Abdulloeva said.

When a battered woman makes the difficult decision to leave an abuser, she finds few shelters to take her in – and time limits on those that are available.

For example, Moscow had only one state-funded shelter for battered women in 2013, the BBC reported, although a plan for a second was in the works. Armenia, with a population of 3 million, has just one shelter for the whole country – in the capital of Yerevan.

Moscow officials contended in 2013 that two shelters would be enough for the city of 12 million – a comment that women’s rights activists shook their heads over.

Those at the Moscow shelters are limited to a two-month stay. That means that, despite being battered, a woman has to move quickly to provide for herself and the children she’s brought with her. There’s so much demand for shelters in some places in the former Soviet Union that stays must be limited to just two weeks.

How can the domestic-violence situation in the former Soviet Union be turned around?

To start with, every country needs to pass domestic-abuse laws that make any kind of assault a crime and that provide for restraining orders against abusers.

Second, governments need to mount comprehensive educational campaigns to change the mentality that domestic abuse is a family matter and not a crime.

And, third, countries need to have more hotlines that battered women can call for help and more shelters where they can escape abusers.

These changes will take time. Unfortunately, time is something that hundreds of thousands of battered women can’t afford.

Armine Sahakyan is a human rights activist based in Armenia.