Equality in the number of victims of domestic violence and cancer in Iran

Sara.Kh. FCNN News Agency: From the moment she realized in the newspapers that "death and disability due to domestic violence and cancer are equal among Iranian women," she lost her limbs.

Shirin is a fugitive from the newspaper. It wasn't like that years ago. But her husband wanted her to. From the day she wore her white wedding dress. It was as if he had stipulated in the marriage contract that his wife should stay away from society, and Shirin's family had accepted it. The custom was the same. Of course, in Shirin's religious family.

No one asked the opinion of this 15-year-old girl who loved school and studying.

Her parents used to say that the sound of a woman walking should not reach the ears of a non-mahram man, and if it does reach him and his mood changes, it is the woman who will burn in the fire of hell on the Day of Judgment and will be punished for her actions.

But Shirin read this news in a newspaper she got from her friend. Under the pretext of cleaning the vegetables, she spread the newspaper out and read it. So that if Khosrow came by, she would have no excuse and break all the bowls and jars on the vegetable seller's head.

It was nearly five in the evening and Khosrow was slowly arriving. But the wife of the house was not feeling well. She was afraid that she would give her husband another excuse. She looked everywhere. There was nothing wrong.

The food was ready. The tableware was there, but he was still afraid.

He has been in this state every evening for thirty years. And his two children have been with him in this state for more than 15 years, ever since they knew their left and right hands.

He asks them if they have prayed their evening prayers and asks them to go to their rooms so they don't have to witness their father's tantrums like they do every day.

He is confident that Khosrow will find an excuse for a fight and perhaps even a beating.

It's been like this for thirty years, and she's constantly yearning for her husband to love her, the way he pays attention to her in the last 15 minutes of every night.

But he never got what he wanted and every night he went to bed with tears in his eyes.

For thirty years, she had wanted to wear a blue dress and eat stew with her husband, and smile. And for Khosrow, like all his relatives, to tell her how sweet her smile was.

But her husband does not like the color blue and the stew of ghee, and with every sweet smile, if there is an excuse to laugh, she is slandered and cursed. Because her husband considers a woman's laughter a sign of lewdness and believes that a woman's modesty and decency depend on her bitterness and silence.

Shirin knows full well that there is no way out for her. From the beginning of her life with this man, her family has been telling her that you should go to the house of fortune wearing a white dress and leave it wrapped in a shroud.

What crime is it to burn and build?

Every time she told him about her husband's mistreatment, her mother insisted that he should burn and build.

But Shirin read in the newspaper today that, according to researchers, tolerating violence leads to the promotion of abuse and violence from the spouse.

He knew that his wife had a difficult childhood and endured the mistreatment of her stepfather. She was also deprived of education and had earned her living from childhood by being a slave and obeying orders. Perhaps this was why whenever her children complained about the conditions at home and the mistreatment of their mother, she immediately blamed them for providing for the expenses of the house and school. Her usual saying was: "I never dreamed of the bread you eat and the clothes you wear when I was a child."

Death is not the only way out.

However, this 45-year-old woman always asked herself, "What sin have I committed that I have to pay for the suffering of my husband's childhood and adolescence?"

And she didn't know how long this situation would last, but her parents had said until death do you part. This was not a fate that Shirin wanted.

The only thing that could comfort her aching heart was that many women around her were in the same situation. However, she believed that death was not the only way out and that there had to be another solution, but her intellect was not getting anywhere.

Meanwhile, today's newspaper was messing everything up.

Domestic violence is not a crime.

Shirin had read in the same newspaper, quoting an expert, that the legal vacuum was the main reason why men's domestic violence against their wives was considered justifiable.

She now knew that her husband's cursing and slandering was not a crime under the law and carried no punishment.

He even understood that if he went to the forensics to prove his claim about the permanent bruises on his body, in the most optimistic case, Khosrow would only have to pay blood money.

And that was in a situation where, due to the lack of shelter and support, she was forced to be under the same roof with him again. This situation, in her opinion, meant hell in every sense.

He had read from a sociologist that spousal abuse was a form of mental illness.

Shirin, with all her being, had tasted the insult and humiliation from her husband.

She was happy that someone had finally been found and told the hidden pains of Iranian women in the newspapers, but she regretted that there was no way that the men who tortured and the women who were abused by her compatriots could be counted. She herself felt guilty because during thirty years of persecution she had always remained silent so that her family's honor would not be ruined and no one would hear her voice.

Hope for improvement in the first few years

During the first years of their life, there was hope that Khosrow's violent behavior would gradually change, but as time passed, his mistreatment intensified.

The results of the research announced in the newspaper were evidence of this fact, emphasizing that the rate of spousal abuse did not decrease with increasing duration of marriage, and that social tolerance contributed to the persistence of domestic violence and exacerbated it.

Researchers conducted this study in Tehran and concluded that the rate of spousal abuse among married couples in Tehran is 81.7 percent.

The study stated that physical abuse, torture, and even verbal insults and humiliation have very negative effects on women's psychological and social development. Shirin saw all these signs in herself and lamented that so many women in her city were suffering from this condition.

Domestic violence disempowers women

She also read, “Humiliation and humiliation ultimately lead to helplessness and inability to make decisions and will take away women’s empowerment. These female victims not only do not have the ability to take care of their children, home, and family, but they are also deprived of participation and expression of opinion in crucial social and family decisions. In many cases, this group of women do not report violence due to fear of further violence, family disintegration, displacement and homelessness, feelings of loneliness and helplessness, and feelings of shame, and most of them endure this harassment in silence, hoping that things will improve in the future.”

According to the Islamic Penal Code, of all violence committed against women, those that are considered crimes in Iranian law include: insulting, assaulting, or harassing women in public places and streets, aggravating kidnapping by causing damage to their dignity, harassing a pregnant woman, failing to pay alimony, marrying before puberty, threatening to kill and inflict bodily harm, causing telecommunications harassment, and general articles governing blood money, assault, and the resulting punishments.

Shirin noticed that none of these cases mentioned hidden domestic violence, and the law ignored the daily deterioration of women due to violence in their homes and by the closest person in their lives. Of course, in her opinion, few women have the courage to pursue legal action against a man who should be their roommate.

But at the same time, flipping through the newspaper brought to Shirin news that reflected the efforts of affected women to protect themselves from their husbands.

These include the filing of 818 cases of spousal abuse in the forensic medicine of Lorestan, the referral of 1,642 cases of spousal abuse to the forensic medicine centers of Mazandaran in six months, a four percent increase compared to before, and the growth of spousal abuse according to judicial cases in Fars.

65 percent of affected women remain silent

The newspaper quoted Shokoh Navabinejad, head of the Iranian Association for Women's Studies, as saying that according to statistics, less than 35 percent of domestic violence in Iran is reported to the police, and in a three-month investigation, out of 180 domestic violence complaints, 28 were not prosecuted.

In an interview with ISNA, he stated that spousal abuse is more severe among rural Iranian women. However, the statistics are also impressive among women in the capital, and more than 20 percent of married women in Tehran suffer from psychological spousal abuse such as humiliation, neglect, anger, teasing, and swearing.

According to the researcher, psychological and verbal violence ranks first in domestic violence with 52.7 percent, which includes using foul language, swearing, shouting, and making excuses. The next rank is physical violence of the second type, which includes 37.8 percent of domestic violence against women. Slapping, hitting with a fist or other object, and kicking are examples of this type of violence.

Shirin reviewed this part of the news again: “Among Iranian women aged 15 to 44, the rate of death or disability due to domestic violence is equal to the death toll from cancer.”

It was less than five minutes before Khosrow arrived. Shirin asked her sons to leave the house. She had made up her mind. She wanted to stand up to her husband's violence once and for all. If she was beaten or Khosrow's insults continued to fly, she planned to come to the yard and scream, so that everything that others thought was about preserving her honor would suddenly go up in smoke. After thirty years, Shirin realized that in a situation where the law and her family did not recognize her as a human being, she had to believe in herself and go into the pit to claim her human rights.

He was no longer afraid and believed that God protects and preserves all those who stand against oppression.