PRESIDENT David Granger has contended that, while laws are essential in solving crimes, it matters little how many laws are enacted if the core causes of domestic violence are not understood.

He shared the view at the opening of a two-day seminar on tackling domestic abuse in Guyana, at the Marriott Hotel yesterday.Over the years, Guyana has promulgated a number of laws aimed at deterring domestic violence, punishing perpetrators, and protecting victims. These, among others, include the Domestic Violence Act, the Sexual Offenses Act, the Prevention of Crimes Act, the Evidence Act, and the Criminal (Procedures) Act.

President Granger argued that the law has limitations, and the law cannot deal with the impact of violence and rebuild shattered lives and broken homes.

“Laws can punish. They cannot, without an examination of the causes of the crimes, eradicate the scourge of criminal violence and its secondary outcome, domestic violence. Legislation is essential. Explanations, however, are needed also,” he pointed out.

Domestic violence and the culture of violence, President Granger said, are by-products of the emergence, through time, of unequal relations in society and the State.

“Domestic violence should not be seen or defined as simply a set of abusive behaviour. At the root of domestic violence is the real perceived inequality and subordination of women (and children), which extends beyond the individual or family to the wider society…. Any campaign to eradicate domestic violence, therefore, must aim at nothing less than changing the deep-seated cultural attitudes and behaviour that have been learnt,” the President posited.

President Granger stressed that violence in the home cannot be separated from violence in society and the State. The primary cause of domestic violence may not be — as is commonly believed — drunkenness, drug abuse, or everyday disputes. These factors may foster domestic violence, but they are not its causes, the President said, contending that domestic violence is as a result of “a complex interplay of cultural, psychological and social factors which have combined to create an imbalance of power between parties in a relationship”.

This imbalance, which can lead to domination and abuse, is at the root of domestic violence, President Granger said.

He also noted that violence is not a political inevitability or social necessity, but a human invention that is aimed at generating and perpetuating domination of one group or person by another.

Guyana is seeking to reduce and eventually eradicate the infamy of domestic violence. But this requires a sincere and serious approach to ensuring equality and respect for women, girls and other minorities.

“It will take time to undo decades of a culture of criminal violence. The removal of inequalities, both in the home and in the State, is a start; it is a prerequisite for happy homes and a gentler Guyana,” the President said.

SECONDARY IMPACT

A generation ago may still have regarded domestic violence as a private matter. A man hitting his wife was considered a ‘family affair.’ A parent or teacher whipping a child – giving ‘licks’ –- was the conventional, even commendable, form of correction. School fights were considered a regular part of the curriculum, and were dismissed with a comment that “boys will be boys.”

President Granger posited that the everyday inter-personal violence, intimate partner violence, and other forms of domestic violence today are, however, far from normal.

The most deadly forms of domestic violence are usually characterised by arson, execution-murders, murder-suicides, rape-murders, massacres, mutilation and torture, even within families, households and villages. These constitute the most vicious, virulent and prevalent crimes of violence today.

According to President Granger, Guyanese are experiencing the ‘secondary impact’ of surviving in homes, attending schools, and growing up in communities where criminal violence persists or was recently prevalent. He noted that televised and other media images of policemen shooting to death an unarmed wanted man with his hands in the air; corpses of ‘suspects’ being dragged though yards and thrown into trucks or boats; carcasses floating in canals or washed up on the foreshore; and, in more gruesome news media, the bleeding bodies of beheaded men, have been impossible to avoid.

The President added that memories of murder and violence are difficult to erase.

Buildings are still marked with the bullet holes; children became orphans, and violence then migrated from the street to the home.

The Guyana Police Force reported that, during the 3,651 days of the decade 2005-2014, it received 39,566 reports of domestic violence.

President Granger told the forum that ‘Troubles’ is the name given to the decade between 2000 and 2009, which witnessed this country’s most intense and sustained wave of criminal violence since Independence.

There were 1,431 murders during that decade, more than at any other similar period in the modern history of Guyana.

The previous administration never bothered to account to this nation for the hundreds of lives lost through criminal violence.

Friday’s seminar was organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat, in collaboration with the Judiciary of Guyana and the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association. The purpose of the seminar is to provide different groups in the criminal justice system in Guyana with an opportunity to discuss the major issues confronting them in domestic abuse cases, with a view to strengthening the administration of justice.

The forum aims to promote police and judicial sensitisation of gender issues and the law; create awareness of incidence of gender-based violence in Guyana; foster an understanding of the psychology of the abuser and victim; strengthen knowledge of the role of the court in domestic violence cases within the framework of relevant laws; and promote access to justice by victims of domestic abuse.

By Michel Outridge