![]() ![]() ![]() The longer the law operates in the shadows, the more challenging it becomes for victims to seek support or demand intervention. “Yet this may be where China’s domestic violence law is failing victims most.” This is assuming that victims are even aware of the law at all. “Protection orders’ greatest value could be to rural areas, where figures suggest partner violence is roughly twice as common as in cities,” Sixth Tone reports. With cases that reach the court system, judges or officers are likely to pressure victims into mediation, which leaves them vulnerable to future violence. The law’s passage marked a landmark achievement for China’s women’s rights activists, who had been pushing for such domestic violence legislation for two decades along the way there were high-profile protests - e.g., the Feminist Five and their bloody wedding dresses - and one particularly high-profile case, that of Kim Lee, who won a court decision against her abusive husband.īut two years on, the Domestic Violence Law is largely ineffective, creating barriers at every step, from evidence-gathering (they have to do it themselves) to winning in court to seeing protection orders properly enforced. The 2016 Domestic Violence Law (反家庭暴力法 fǎn jiātíng bàolì fǎ) sought to create new protections for victims through comprehensive legal procedures, mainly protection orders (similar to restraining orders) and a written warning system that mandates early intervention from employers, government officials, social workers, and law enforcement. The barriers to combating domestic violence are in part cultural, but they require strong legislation to thoroughly break through. As a result, women like Ah Lian and Wang Yimei (both pseudonyms) are either hesitant to report or face tremendous resistance after doing so. As a result of low legal and social awareness, police officers, judges, the general public, and victims themselves struggle to identify domestic violence as an act that warrants outside involvement. passed its first anti-domestic violence law in 1994, until two years ago, there was no national legislation with the term “domestic violence” in China, and there are still no laws prohibiting marital rape or sexual harassment. The sad reality is that China is late to offer legal protections to victims of domestic abuse. In China, the trend is much the same, with an All-China Women’s Federation and National Statistical Bureau study in 2010 finding that 24.7 percent of Chinese experience domestic violence in their lifetime. The major difference across borders is not the characteristics of the abuse, but the laws and protections in place to respond to and protect the victims. Globally, one in four women experience it. At that time, this was an option offered by the newly implemented national Domestic Violence Law, but the police officers at her local station didn’t understand her pleas for help and told her to “just work it out.”ĭomestic violence is tragically universal, cutting across ethnicity and nationality. She clutched at one of the few options available to her: applying for a restraining order. As a 23-year-old, she had already survived a man who beat her, cut her off from her family, and raped her. That’s what happened with your father.” Wang returned to her husband.Īh Lian was already a survivor by the time she was ready to report her trauma to police, as she relayed to Sixth Tone. She was devastated, then, when she reached their grandparents’ home only to hear her mother urge her to stick it out. “Are you thinking of your children,” she chided, “as you break up your family? Just stay, eventually he will grow too old to beat you. But she thought of them most on the day she finally left her husband, hoping to provide a home for them free from intimidation, violence, and fear. She thought of them when she questioned if this would be the time he would kill her. Wang Yimei thought of her two children when she was slapped in the face and pushed down the stairs.
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