<http://tinyurl.com/hfzbl32> independent.co.uk
Domestic violence reports soar in Russian city following partial
decriminalisation
Mayor of Yekaterinburg believes law change makes domestic violence seem
acceptable
Rachel Roberts | 11 February 2017
Reports of domestic violence have more than doubled in Russia's fourth
largest city since the Government reduced the punishmentfor spousal or
child abuse from a criminal to a civil one.
Police in Yekaterinburg responded to 350 incidents of domestic violence
daily since the law was relaxed compared to 150 such incidents previously,
according to the city's mayor.
Yevgeny Roizman told Russian media: "Before, people were afraid of
criminal charges - this acted as some kind of safety barrier.
...
Roizman made a short indistinct post in a social network, and the Russian
'opposition' media picked up and promoted it. A few days later, some angry
local MPs at a meeting of the regional parliament demanded from Roizman to
clarify his claim. Also they asked the regional police chief to present them
the statistics. At the meeting, Roizman said <http://tinyurl.com/n5rqrbo> in
his defense he meant clearly not the 'rise of domestic violence' as such but
just the increase in the number of police raids due to the cases [likely]
related to domestic violence. It was a sly and bogus excuse from Roizman, his
original message connoted in another way.
In turn, the increase in the police activities is, actually, what the law was
mainly intended for. I.e. to make the police more enthusiastic about such
cases. As practice shows, after family quarrels accompanied by non-serious
violence, people usually tend to put up soon. But if the police have opened a
criminal case, then they can't close it just because the figurants want to put
up. Such a situation made the police reluctant about it. Softening of the law
makes them more enthusiastic to deal with the violent family quarrels.
It would be very ridiculous to think that the wife-beaters in Yekaterinburg
carefully watched the work of the Russian parliament and started their
violence right at the day when the parliament had 'allowed' it, as the cited
article and Roizman himself suggest. It's such a kind of folks that hardly
are much interested in / aware of what's going on in the parliament. The real
explanation is that the police became more enthusiastic, and, as I said, that
is the main goal the law was introduced for.
Mr. Roizman is a controversial, sort of liberal-populist, figure in the Russia
domestic politics. He started his adult life, in the 1980s, with cheating and
robbing his girlfriends, for which the Soviet justice sent him to the gulags
for a year or two. Later he was known for his [alleged] links to the regional
criminal community. It did not prevent him from his further adventures in the
political activism. He has achieved certain success in the Yekaterinburg
region (was elected the mayor of the big city). Time to time he makes weird
and odd claims. He is also known as a poet, painter and philanthropist of the
Orthodox Church. There're also some traces of abuse of alcohol on his face.
...
According to Rossiskaya Gazeta, the Russian government's official newspaper,
between 12,000 and 14,000 women die every year in Russia as a result of
domestic violence - a figure backed up by a 2010 UN report.
...
Rossiskaya Gazeta is the Russian government's official newspaper, but it does
not mean that anything published in this newspaper is official and accurate.
What mainly makes it official is that it publishes the official texts of the
laws etc. Besides that the newspaper publishes various opinions and gives the
floor to various authors, whose claims and numbers in no way are official.
The claim that "between 12,000 and 14,000 women die every year in Russia as a
result of domestic violence" has nothing to do with reality. It was likely
once produced by a sick imagination of some 'pro-women' activists, and then it
wanders from one shoddy stinky leftist outlet to another shoddy stinky leftist
outlet. Rossiskaya Gazeta also gave the floor to the activists of the sort
that alleged such a number. Some of them promote it as a misinformation
intentionally, maybe some of them believe it's better to exaggerate the number
as much as possible in order to draw more public attention to the problem they
believe is important. Sometimes the Russian officials, heads of corresponding
departments, in order to obtain more budgets and favor for their departments,
make smartass exaggeratedly alarmist claims that do not fit to any statistics,
but the journalists pick up and promote it as allegedly official data.
...
Up to one in three Russian women is believed to suffer some form of physical
abuse at the hands of a partner, while 40 per cent of all violent crimes
and murders take place within the home, according to the Anna Centre, which
runs Russia's only domestic violence hotline.
...
This claim 'one in three' is an absolutely total nonsense, which would be
obvious for anyone who knows a little about the regular life in Russia. There
may be 'problem' families, but in no way 'one in three', which would mean it's
such a common practice. What it really means is that the shoddy stinky 'Anna
Centre' wants to claim how much important 'Anna Centre' is. This Anna Centre
is known for promotion of fake numbers <https://on.rt.com/822v>, the "14,000
women die every year" fiction was likely produced in a similar way as well.
...
A popular Russian saying is "if he beats you, it means he loves you" and
tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda carried an article after the law was passed
saying that women should be "proud of their bruises" from violent husbands
because some evolutionary psychologists claim they are more likely to give
birth to sons.
...
If you investigate those many thousands of the Russian sayings, taking them
literally, then you can find there, inter alia, advices and endorsements of
various kinds of immoral and dishonest behavior, fraud, deception etc etc.
That's because the sayings are in no way moral imperatives. Some of them may
be. A saying is, basically, just a saying, - an expressive phrase that may be
appropriate to say/repeat sometimes on occasion. It may be said ironically,
sarcastic, deliberate ambiguously and so on. I suspect it's so in any
language, although Russian is especially 'deceptive' language, which allows
much more shades of ambiguety than, say, English. Anyway, interpretation of
sayings as [necessarily] imperatives is a sign of cultural primitivism, and
that's what the shoddy stinky left really is.
This notorious "if he beats you, it means he loves you" Russian saying also
wanders from one leftist BS writing to another leftist BS writing, and each
shoddy scribbler presents it as it was an imperative. This saying might be to
some extent imperatively relevant in the past, in the densely patriarchal
society a wife might find husband's anger is better than his disinterest to
her. However, I think, even in the past it likely had an ambiguous meaning.
The saying is known, but not 'popular'. I never heard people use it often in
the everyday life. I first heard it from my grandmother when I was a child,
she said it's such a joke that an anger means at least a non-indifference.
The tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda 'carried the article' without any relation
to the law <http://clck.ru/BH5KZ>. Moreover the British scribbler was too
shy to clarify the fact the tabloid simply retold a pretty old British
scientific research (this article <http://tinyurl.com/ydh7z53w>). In order to
properly understand it one should know that a reference to 'the British
scientists' is such a kind of meme in Russia which means there's a droll BS
which may (or may not) contain elements of non-BS. When the KP staff
discovered that the British media were unable to understand their humor and
indecently used reference to their article as an alleged example of
promotion of violence, they changed it a bit and added a special disclaimer
for idiots explaining what the article is really about.