When one hears of an epidemic, what comes to mind almost immediately is an extremely prevalent disease spreading throughout the population in a locality. The imagery is of sick people who must go to hospitals where they will be treated or quarantined – depending on the virulence of the epidemic. One’s thoughts run to death and immunization. One imagines, too, health officials implementing a plan to halt or reduce the spread of the disease.
In fact, perhaps the most important thing to have when there is an outbreak or epidemic, is a plan. You can have the best treatment available on the planet and the most up-to-date centres for delivering this, but if you do not have a plan, you’re doomed. What you will have is a host of people running helter-skelter, duplication of effort in some areas, things left undone in others as well as a serious case of personnel schizophrenia, all of which would lend to the spread of your epidemic.
However, according to www.dictionary.com, an epidemic can also be defined as a rapid spread or increase in the occurrence of something; anything that takes possession of the minds of people as an epidemic does of their bodies. It gives as examples, an epidemic of riots, an unemployment epidemic and an epidemic of terror. I have one to add – an epidemic of violence against women.
There can be no disputing the fact that violence against women has reached epidemic proportions. I am by no means saying that this is happening only in Guyana. No, women are constantly being abused verbally, mentally and emotionally; battered; maimed; and murdered all around the world.
While some of this is attributable to general crime, a too-significant percentage is as a result of partner violence. (I personally prefer not to use domestic violence any more since not all of it occurs in the home or in a domestic situation. It is also my firm belief that the two words simply do not mesh. There should be no violence in a home, not against a woman or man, not against a child, not against an elderly person.)
However, the fact that it is rampant around the world does not mean that it should not be dealt with here. Partner violence is not cultural; nor is it confined to any particular race or ethnic group; neither is it only prevalent in certain classes of people. What it is, is an aberrant, which can and should be completely abolished.
Containing this epidemic entails working with a plan, which should be country specific, since not every intervention that sees success in one area will necessarily work in another. Women throughout Guyana are abused and beaten every single day; statistics at the hospitals and doctors’ offices; at Help and Shelter; at the Ministry of Human Services; at the police stations and magistrates’ courts will support this.
However, what is peculiar to this country is that the killing, maiming and battering of women, including and especially by their partners, and the various sub-terrors associated with these events – like mothers and children also being injured or killed in the process – occur in spurts. It goes like this: a woman is killed or maimed at Linden; in a few days there is another incident or two in George-town, then on the West Demerara, East Demerara, Essequibo, Berbice and perhaps in the Hinterland; then there is a lull until it starts again. It seems to me that much like the strange copycat phenomenon with regard to suicides in this country, men who have the predisposition to kill or maim their women, are more likely to follow through with it after there would have been an episode or two in the public domain. There may be no formally documented evidence to support this right now, but the data is there floating around online and in the dailies. All that is required is for one or more social scientists to gather it and formulate it into a study, which would give some amount of insight into the problem.
Dealing with it requires political will from the highest level. Unless it is made very clear that the maiming and killing of women will not be tolerated by government, by employers, by society, it will never end. This country is not completely without the resources to tackle this problem and make serious inroads into reducing it. They may not be sufficient, but there is a shelter, there are organizations that offer counselling and female empowerment and there is a law.
It might not be the most perfect bit of legislation ever written, but its provisions offer recourse to women who might be afraid to go it alone. However, this law is not being enforced. I doubt that many police officers know what their roles are under the act; most of them have never read it and some do not even know it exists.
I alluded to this in a column I wrote in July this year following the murder and unlawful cremation of Cynthia Adams at Bartica in July and the chopping and stabbing of two female police officers in Berbice around the same time (one of the spurts I referred to earlier). All three incidents were allegedly committed by the women’s partners. There was a history of reports in the Bartica incident, which were never followed up.
The law allows the police to institute charges and prosecute men who abuse women, even if the women involved withdraw out of fear. The police can press charges if they are called by a neighbour or passerby; the woman does not have to report the crime herself. I do not believe this has been done more than once if at all, since the law was passed some 12 years ago.
Until and unless the hierarchy of the police force and the home ministry lay down the law against the apathy to personal crimes against women, the situation will persist. Part of the plan for eradicating the epidemic of violence against women should be for the police to be mandated to take every report seriously and to have it investigated with the same vigour as a report of a drug drop or a gang war. Perhaps some amount of activism is needed to get this moving and everyone concerned should speak up now. Or we will be forever mourning the deaths of sisters.
