Newsletter #62
Feature
The 3rd Asia-Pacific Summit on Gender-based Violence Turning Laws into Actions: Eliminating Gender-based Violence in Asia-Pacific
ACSVAW co-organised the 3rd Asia-Pacific Summit (‘the Summit’) on Gender-based Violence with the Taiwan Coalition Against Violence (TCAV) and the Equality Rights Project of the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong on 16-18 June. The Summit focused on the enforcement and judicial process of gender-based violence (GBV) related laws. It featured more than 30 speakers from India, South Korea, Nepal, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China to share their experience and exchange ideas. Beginning with the trends and challenges of GBV in the Asia-Pacific region, speakers shared the ordeal of victims in face of COVID-19, the newly emerged digital and image-based sexual violence (IBSV), as well as their experience on advocating legal rights for victim-survivors. The Summit concluded with the discussion of innovative strategies for preventing GBV.
Gender-based Violence and the Victims’ Situations under COVID-19
A few speakers discussed the current situations of GBV and the dilemma that the victims faced in the context of COVID-19. Ms Bandana Rana, the Nepali member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and High Level Commission on ICPD25 Follow-up, pointed out, among all forms of GBV, intimate partner violence is the most common. The cases of intimate partner violence increased by 50% due to the outbreak of COVID-19, such phenomenon is called the “Shadow Pandemic”. Rana also highlighted that some countries in the Asia-Pacific region only deal with patients related to the epidemic, restricting other medical services and thus, have impeded other medical services. This results in victims’ restricted access to gynaecological, obstetric and reproductive healthcare services.
During the lockdown due to COVID-19, the number of IBSV cases increased drastically. Ms Sophie Mortimer, manager of Revenge Porn Helpline from the United Kingdom, stated that the helpline has received over 3000 help-seeking phone calls in 2020. Given that the number of received calls in 2019 is 1700, an increase of approximately 85% within a year was recorded. OnlyFans, a subscription-based social media platform, has gained popularity among the citizens as a means to earn money during the lockdown. Many content creators of OnlyFans were selling pornographic images and videos on the platform to compensate for the loss of income caused by the pandemic. Yet, this platform is prone to being used by abusers of IBSV, therefore breeding the violence. As mentioned by Mortimer, a considerable amount of cases received during lockdown were related to OnlyFans, e.g. the victims’ intimate images got posted by their (former) partners without consent.
COVID-19 obstructs victims of GBV seeking help. Taking victims of domestic violence in mainland China as an example, feminist activist Ms Wang Fang (pseudonym) mentioned, because of the prevention and control measures corresponding to pandemic, especially due to the blockade of various regions in Mainland China, it was difficult for the victims to escape from the abusers. Wang shared a story of a victim who lived in a rural area: as access control was implemented, the only way to escape from the abusers and their residence was blocked due to the victim’s lack of documents for exit/entry permission. Besides, the passive attitude of police in handling domestic violence cases had aroused their attentions. Wang mentioned that police officers tended not to punish abusers. Worse still, they convinced the victims not to hold the abusers accountable. This phenomenon became more prominent during the pandemic, leaving the victims in the lurch.
Victim-centred Legislative Reforms
Complicated legal procedures and the lack of empathy of judicial officers bar the victim-survivors from achieving justice. In light of this, speakers from Taiwan and Malaysia shared their experience on advocating for victims’ rights within the legal system, which includes pressing for legislation to increase admissibility of vulnerable victims’ testimonies (e.g. underage or mentally disabled), minimising secondary victimisation during the investigation and trial process, and providing legal support for victims.
Ms Lin Mei Hsun, the Board Director of TCAV and Taiwan Association for Wellbeing of Children and Adolescents, shared their experiences of promoting victim-centred justice by raising the admissibility of vulnerable victims’ testimonies, to increase the prosecution and conviction rates. One important reform was the introduction of the ‘Forensic Interview System and Training’ to the judicial system. Article 15-1 of the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act (amended as of 2015) specified – for underage and mentally disabled victims of sexual assault, they may be interrogated with the assistance of relevant professionals or judicial policeman, judicial police officer, prosecuting officer, prosecutor or judge who has received relevant professional training. Such measure has standardised the process of interrogation and hence, reduced the inadmissibility of evidence due to improper interrogation and increased the reliability of vulnerable victims’ testimonies. Since victim’s testimony plays a key role in sexual assault cases, improving the quality of testimony helps victims to achieve justice in the legal system.
Ms Say Tee Ooi from the Women’s Centre for Change (WCC) in Malaysia introduced the multi-pronged approach used by WCC to fight for justice, which includes victim support service, research and resource development, training, legal lobbying, national consultation, and multi-agency dialogue. WCC presses for legal rights of the victims, such as special arrangements for child victims, application for closed-door trials and request for a victim impact statement as sentencing reference. Other than that, professional training was provided to doctors, nurses, prosecutors, judges, police, welfare officers, and court interpreters to increase their sensitivity in supporting victims. To prepare victims for trial, WCC published the educational booklet and video ‘Surviving Court’ for victims’ reference.
Helping Victim-survivors to Break Silence through Innovative Intervention
Two speakers shared their experiences of using art as a means for the victim-survivors to voice out. Both speakers chose to organise physical exhibitions to visualise the experiences of the victim-survivors. It creates a sensory impact on the visitors to put them in the shoes of victim-survivors.
Ms Zhao Liu (pseudonym) visualises the victims’ dilemma through curating the art exhibition ‘#MeToo in China’, which showed how victims were silenced in Mainland China. One of the installation art works puts blades and audio recordings of victims in the same space, presenting the difficulties and harms faced by the victim-survivors when revealing their experiences. Activists of gender equality in Mainland China often face cyber violence, most commonly in the form of gender-discriminatory abuse. To raise the public’s attention to this issue, Zhao launched a large-scale installation art piece on a desert in Northern China. It consisted of dazzling banners with the attacking comments against activists on social media, in order to visualise the violence appearing in the internet world.
Ms Linda Sau-yung Wong, the Executive Director of RainLily, shared her experience of using art exhibitions as an innovative strategy to help victim-survivors break the silence. On their current exhibition ‘#OneInSeven: Stories Beyond the Numbers’, they displayed items chosen by 11 victim-survivors together with the self-written stories. Since most victim-survivors revealed the assault after many years, it was difficult for them to seek justice through the legal system. This exhibition provides a channel for the victim-survivors to voice out their experience and allows the public to understand them, providing an alternative form of justice.
Conclusion
The Summit investigated the current trends of domestic violence and image-based sexual violence and the unique phenomenon observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Summit not only provided the participants with an opportunity to better understand and reflect on GBV, but also facilitated the exchange of experience and cooperation between different organisations in the Asia-Pacific region.
This article is written by interns Kendall Yuen and Gigi Hon
Hear Me Out
An Alternative Aside of Legal Justice: Community Justice
The majority society recognises justice primarily as “legal justice”, which is to seek judgement and penalty towards criminals through the judicial system, judging with law as basis, in accordance with corroboration, and principles including ‘better to be connived at than to be accused’ and ‘benefit of the doubt goes to the defendant’. Achieving legal justice (typically referring to a perpetrator being convicted, and their penalty can reasonably reflect the harm caused to the victim and society) is not an easy task; according to foreign research and local experience, the proportion of sexually assaulted victims successfully earning legal justice is very low. The influencing factors include laws, systems, cultures and individuals, along with the judicial system filled with “rape myths” and victims-blaming culture, bringing second trauma to the victims.
Justice and healing hold a close relation. RainLily discovered that a number of sexual violence victim-survivors experienced anger, frustration and helplessness due to the failure of earning legal justice; the strong sense of injustice poses a large barrier to their healing from traumas. Seeing legal justice as the only pathway to justice always forces victims into a dead end in the journey of pursuing justice. The process of aiding victims allows us to reflect on our society’s sole understanding on justice, and prompted us consider the possibility of “alternative justice”. “Community justice” is considered one of the “alternative justice” aside from legal justice. “Community justice” is mainly achieved by the narrative therapy such as “outsider witness”. For instance, the “Community Justice Forum” – storytelling by victims individually/ in a group, then to be affirmed in the community. Due to the fact that justice is constructed in narration, “community justice” is also known as “narrative justice”. In the process of narrating and recounting the stories, victims can gain justice and affirmation from supportive community, including:
• The fact that one was harmed by sexual violence, as well as victims’ subjective experiences of being harmed (the extent of victims being harmed cannot be defined by the means of sexual assault (rape vs indecent assault vs verbal sexual harassment));
• Second trauma and inappropriate treatment in supporting system (including medical, judicial and service, etc.);
• Limitations in the judicial system in addressing sexual assault cases;
• Rape myths in the social culture that bring about trauma to victims;
• Victims’ rights to seek different models of justice;
• Any form of sexual violence is unacceptable.
“Community Justice Forum”, on one hand, can provide opportunities for victims to participate in policy reform; to seek a way out for personal misery, that is “my suffering is not for nothing”, and on the other hand, mobilises manpower to organise detailed advocacy operations through these platforms.
Having community justice as an alternative of legal justice allows more people to understand the harm of sexual violence to individuals/society, as well as the limitations of the judicial system when dealing with sexual assault cases. In addition to ensuring the rights of sexually assaulted victims to fight for their justice, justice can also be practiced in the community, bringing victims back on the right track in life. Contradiction does not exist between legal justice and community justice, yet it takes time for the former to improve while time is of the essence for supporting the recovery of victims and striving for justice!
In the past few years, the author has hosted several community justice forums, and discovered obvious healing effects to victims, a number of outsider witnesses presented a “suddenly enlightened” response; some victim-survivors and outsider witnesses even committed and took part in legal and policy-making advocacy operations. Community justice has provided possibilities for “alternative justice”, and we look forward to attaining justice with sexual violence survivors and fellows pursuing sexual equality within and outside the system!
This article is written by Professor Hung Suet-lin, Shirley, Head of Social Work Department, Hong Kong Baptist University