By Brooke Anderson
BEIRUT: Hundreds of Lebanese
gathered in downtown Beirut Saturday to protest the country’s lack of
legislation against domestic violence.
The campaign, STOP Domestic Violence
Against Women, was held at Samir Kassir Square, attracting nearly 300
supporters. Local activists organized the demonstration to raise awareness of
Lebanon’s lack of laws protecting women from domestic abuse, including spousal
rape and physical violence.
Protesters carried signs reading,
“If you want a chick, go buy an egg,” “Adam and Even,” and “All marriages are
sacred, but not all are safe.” A similar march against rape last month drew
around 600.
“In Lebanon, women don’t know the
laws that don’t protect them,” said Hala Akiki, who helped organize the event
through a campaign that included billboards, television ads and fliers, with
the support of her employer, advertising agency Leo Burnett.
«“The attempts to derail efforts to
fix these archaic laws are despicable, and I refuse to stand idly by as the law
is rendered obsolete”»The ads, which have been running for the past several
weeks, show a woman with a black eye, beneath the words, “Legally, he can still
abuse you.” Akiki says that the original caption, “He will legally rape you,”
was deemed too inflammatory for Lebanon’s General Security authorities, but the
words remain on the group’s Facebook page.
Plans for the protest came following
a series of leaks from parliament, which has been reviewing a domestic violence
draft law since April 2010. The proposed legislation, drafted by the NGO Kafa
and supported by dozens of other groups, calls for the punishment of men who
physically or sexually abuse their wives. Currently, there’s no such
legislation, with all family law being governed by religious courts, which tend
to favor men.
Critics argue that the parliamentary
committee tasked with studying the law has made so many concessions that the
law has become irrelevant.
The committee is made up of eight
MPs (seven men and one woman): Samir Jisr, Nabil Nicolas, Michel Helou,
Gilberte Zouein, Ghassan Moukheiber, Ali Ammar, Imad Hout and Shant Jinjinian.
One of the most controversial
amendments made by the group removed a clause in the draft law that would
outlaw spousal rape.
In December, Hout told The Daily
Star, “There’s nothing called rape between a husband and a wife. It’s called
forcing someone violently to have intercourse.”
“I think the existing domestic
violence laws are ridiculous,” said Gino Raidy, a student at AUB who blogs
about Lebanese society and politics. He added that “the attempts to derail
efforts to fix these archaic laws are despicable, and I refuse to stand idly by
as the law is rendered obsolete”
Maya Ammar, media officer at Kafa,
acknowledges her frustration with the delays and concessions in implementing a
strong law to protect women against domestic violence.
“While they were studying the law,
they distorted it,” she says. “But we’ll find new ways to put pressure [on the
government].”
Indeed, for those looking to send a
message to the government, there was some hope for protesters, with the
presence of Telecommunications Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui, whose Free Patriotic
Movement, which holds the majority of the committee members, has been
criticized for failing to safeguard the law.
“His presence and support for the
movement fighting the damaging draft law amendments were… welcome,” Raidy said.
“And protestors demanded he pressure his party's MPs to drop the amendments.”
Still, with only a few hundred in
attendance and an overall lack awareness of the issue in society, activists
appear to have a daunting task ahead of them.
Akiki says, “I don’t know if
we’ll have an answer. But maybe it’s the first step toward awareness.”
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