Purely female murder – Picture of the day – Kommersant

During the coronavirus pandemic – in 2020 and 2021 – more than 70% of all women killed in Russia became victims of domestic violence. Such data was obtained by the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Associations (NGOs) after analyzing 11,175 court convictions for “murder”, “murder in the heat of passion” and “intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm”. The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation told Kommersant that the topic of protection from domestic violence will be included in the National Action Strategy for Women for 2023-2030.

2680 women died from domestic violence in Russia in 2020 and 2021. This is respectively 70.9% and 71.1% of all cases of killings of the fairer sex in the country. The statistics were published by the human rights Consortium of Women’s NGOs (engaged in legal support for victims of domestic violence). In August last year, the association published similar statistics for the period from 2011 to 2019. At that time, an analysis of the sentences showed that in eight years in Russia, 12,209 women died at the hands of their husbands and cohabitants.

“Over the period 2020-2021, we analyzed 11,175 new verdicts posted in the public domain on the State Antimonopoly Service “Justice” and the Moscow City Court website,” the consortium’s report says. “We found 3,759 verdicts that described the murder of women. The real death toll from domestic violence could be even higher as many sentences are released late or not at all.”

The report cites fragments of cases where men explain their crimes, including “losing their jobs” due to the covid epidemic, “mental anxiety”, “lack of patience” and the inability to “leave because of the coronavirus” from the city.

The authors note the highest level of domestic violence over these two years in cases considered in St. Petersburg, the Perm Territory, Omsk, Kurgan and Moscow Regions.

“We sent requests to all regions during the pandemic with a request to take additional measures to help victims of domestic violence,” explains Sofya Rusova, co-author of the report, an employee of the consortium. “Some regions, such as Bashkiria, have stepped up the work of hotlines, but these are minimal measures in the context of the whole country. The percentage of partner violence has grown catastrophically (that is, in a couple that is not officially married.— “b”), and although the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not have relevant statistics, we classified such cases according to the words “cohabitant”, “lover”, “partner”, making a comprehensive analysis of sentences.

It is impossible to say that growth did not continue in 2022, Ms. Rusova points out. She retells the indirect causes of the “catastrophe” mentioned in the report: “Police stations remained closed for a long time during the pandemic, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs offered to send applications by mail, the courts were also closed for two to three months. We are still trying to get punishment for the police officers who allowed the murder of Ekaterina Telkina in Moscow in March 2020 (she died in March 2020, she repeatedly wrote statements against her partner due to beatings and twice called the police on the eve of her death.— “b”). This is not about feminism, but about protecting a woman’s right to life, that’s what our report is about.”

The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not promptly respond to Kommersant’s request for statistics on calls in cases of domestic violence, as well as the initiation of criminal and administrative cases against aggressors. In May, the human rights project Axioma published a report based on statistics from the Judicial Department under the Supreme Court for 2021. According to the report, most often criminal cases on domestic violence are initiated for “deliberate infliction of minor bodily harm” (Part 1 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code, punishable by a fine of up to 40,000 rubles or arrest for up to 4 months), “beating a person subjected to administrative punishment” (Article 116.1 of the Criminal Code, punishable, among other things, by arrest for up to six months), “torture” (Part 1 of Article 117 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, punishable, among other things, by imprisonment for up to 3 years). For an administrative offense – “beating” (Article 6.1.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) – a fine of 5 thousand to 30 thousand rubles, arrest up to 15 days or up to 120 hours of compulsory work. The authors of the Axioms report pointed out that in 93,000 cases the courts issued fines, the total amount of which exceeded 496 million rubles, and the average fine amounted to 5,346 rubles, which is slightly higher than the minimum penalty for beatings.

“In 2020, we asked the government and the Federation Council to take emergency measures to protect victims of domestic violence,” recalls Mari Davtyan, co-author of the consortium report, head of the Center for the Protection of Victims of Domestic Violence. “We were told that there was no reason (for emergency measures.— “b”). Valentina Matvienko, in particular, said that all families, on the contrary, will unite during self-isolation.”

The main goal of the report, Ms. Davtyan points out, is to finalize the National Action Strategy for Women until 2030. Such a document was prepared by the Ministry of Labor for 2017-2022 and is now being developed for the next seven years. “The chapter on violence against women, including in the family, has been excluded from the draft strategy, which is currently being discussed. This is blasphemous,” emphasizes Marie Davtyan.

The Ministry of Labor responded to a request from Kommersant that the current strategy “is aimed at solving the main tasks of improving the well-being of women and their social well-being, including maintaining women’s health, expanding their employment opportunities and economic independence, political activity and opportunities for self-realization.” “When developing a new strategy, the decisions aimed at improving the status of women taken over the past five years, as well as unresolved problems are taken into account,” the ministry’s response says. “. Given the continuing urgency of the problems, the draft new strategy maintains a similar direction.”

Part of the work can be aimed at psychological support for both victims of violence and aggressors, Irina Kirkora, deputy chairman of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, head of the World of the Family center, believes. She noted that in the Russian Federation either a law on such psychological assistance should be adopted, or a draft law on the prevention of domestic violence should be finalized with an appropriate amendment.

The need for a law on domestic violence in the Russian Federation has been discussed over the past few decades. The first versions of the draft law “prevention of domestic violence” were discussed back in the 1990s. By 2004, according to the estimates of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, the State Duma had time to consider about 50 draft laws on domestic violence. The last of them was published on the website of the Federation Council in November 2019, but was not considered due to disputes by human rights activists. Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of the Committee on State Building and Legislation, called it contrary to the Constitution.

Maria Starikova, Natalya Kostarnova