Battery in Private

Russia Has No Legal Mechanism for Prosecuting Domestic Abuse.

The government considers violence against women in their homes as a strictly private matter, unless the victim sustains medium to severe injuries.

 

Yekaterina Vinogorova, a 39-year-old mother of three, finally fled her 15-year-long marriage after her husband broke her nose and ribs and covered her in bruises. “He would have these periodic outbursts of jealousy. The last time he beat me up so badly I simply walked out, but he carried on following me. Once he slashed the tires on my car. He was stalking me everywhere,” she said.

For three months Vinogorova and her children were given refuge at Moscow’s shelter for victims of domestic violence until she could move in with her parents, where she remains almost two years on. The paycheck she gets at a Moscow beauty salon is just about enough to support herself and her children, but the situation with her husband is far from resolved.

Vinogorova is prosecuting him in court for the assault. Still, Russia has no legal mechanism for imposing restraining orders even though persuasive research shows that women are most at risk when leaving their partners. She always gives police statements when she is harassed by him, but with little success. Since she left him, he has attacked her father to convince her to return, vandalized her car by tearing out the battery and wires under the hood and finally burnt down their country home. “The trouble is none of this can be proven and the police aren’t interested,” she said, adding that he refuses to hand over her and her children’s passports.

“People like this get some kind of gratification from all this. He’s actually living with another woman now, but apparently this doesn’t make him want to leave us alone. And it all continues unpunished. I just don’t know how this is going to end. When I go out, I make sure I keep checking around me. Who knows what’s on his mind and no one’s there to protect me. The police do nothing.”

Yekaterina’s case is not entirely typical—she was, at least, fortunate enough to make it to a shelter. “They helped me a lot. I lived there with my children for three months. They had lawyers and psychiatrists, and it was all free,” she said. Russia has just 23 of these local government-funded shelters, clearly too few for a largely ignored social issue which claims a staggering 14,000 women’s lives a year, according to government statistics cited by this year’s UN report titled “End the Silence.”

The capital, with its real population way in excess of ten million, has only one shelter, the “Hope Center,” which has 35 beds, said Elena Korsakova, its director. NGO workers consider the 14,000 deaths a year a conservative estimate even though it equates to the number of soldiers the Soviet Union lost in its decade-long abortive campaign in Afghanistan. Put otherwise, one woman is killed by her partner every 40 minutes, meaning that Russian women are three times more likely to be abused within the walls of their own home by their partners than they are even on the streets, a report by ANNA, Russia’s leading domestic violence NGO working trying to curb violence against women, found this year.

What’s more, in Russia domestic violence is as likely within the walls of the elite Rublyovka mansions as it is in the apartments of its bleak single-industry cities. “This problem transcends any social strata or social group,” said Marina Pisklakova-Parker, the director of ANNA. “It doesn’t depend on education, income or other forms of social status. It happens in every type of family. It’s everywhere. But still it is not discussed.”

Suffering in silence

Russian pop diva Valeria brought domestic violence into Russia’s headlines when in 2005 she documented ten years of quietly suffering beatings from her husband, the man who managed her superstar music career. But this was a rare public glimpse into domestic violence, and the anguish of its victims more often goes unheard in a matter that is socially perceived as a private affair. “In society, domestic violence is not considered bad behavior,” said Pisklakova-Parker. “When nobody says you cannot beat your wife, then everybody who does it assumes they have a right to do it. There is only silence. Society says ‘it’s okay, it’s not a crime’.” In his State of the Nation address this year, President Dmitry Medvedev delivered a wide-ranging plan to protect women and children to halt the population crisis because of the forecasted drop in women of child-bearing age, but he made no mention of the violence at home killing 14,000 women a year.

Out of Russia’s three mainstream pollsters, the Public Opinion Fund, VTsIOM, and Levada, only the latter could provide any statistics on domestic violence, and even that poll dated back to 2006. That year, 26 percent of Russians said that domestic violence is “very widespread” in Russia, 45 percent said “quite widespread” and 19 percent said “not widespread,” according to Levada. The rest were “not sure.”

Muddled numbers

Moreover, statistics are unreliable because of the backwardness of the government’s approach to domestic violence. No distinction is drawn between crimes against different genders, meaning that Interior Ministry statistics on domestic violence are inaccurate. There are also a raft of ambiguities in the Interior Ministry data issued to the public. Speaking at an event organized to prevent future domestic violence in 2008, the police said that there were over 200,000 domestic violence crimes committed by people when drunk, but also said that there are over 250,000 people suffering from alcoholism. “Are these alcoholics among the domestic violence offenders, or are these two different categories?” asked this year’s ANNA report that tried to make sense of the data to pinpoint problematic areas.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, NGO workers say that as many as 70 percent of women are victims of domestic violence. But accurate country-comparisons are tricky. What sets Russia apart is the shocking death toll, which stems from deficient government measures to nip cases in the bud before they escalate. “We have only criminal articles, meaning that intervention can be carried out only when the injuries are medium or severe or in the case of murder,” said Pisklakova-Parker. “Because of the nature of domestic violence, by the time women are suffering medium injuries it is too late. The level of danger is already very high.”

“It’s difficult to assess how Russia compares with other countries, but in Russia there are more frequent cases of domestic violence ending in death because there is no state-level system for helping women, said Larissa Ponarina, the deputy director of ANNA.

Alexei Parshin, a lawyer who does pro bono work for the victims, said that one of the main legal challenges is the lack of a legal mechanism to impose restraining orders. “If a lover, civil partner, or husband continues following a woman, there is no legal mechanism to limit his interaction with that woman,” he said. “We have a witness protection program, but this law is not used for crimes of this gravity.” Significantly, there is no specific article in the criminal code against domestic violence, meaning that acts of domestic violence are seen in the same light as simple assault.

Punishments usually amount to little more than fines and do not take into account the relationship between the assailant and the victim (sometimes as straightforward as one of economic dependence), and the psychological trauma thereby caused. “In some situations, criminals are due a jail sentence but we can’t get it because jail sentences aren’t stipulated for fighting. I think sentences need to be made tougher,” said Parshin. “If there was a law on domestic violence, then we could give more serious terms, or at least suitable terms which, in the case of a repeated offense, would be made appropriately serious.”

Pisklakova-Parker agreed. “We don’t have legislation that says ‘no,’ you cannot do it. Even when cases get to court, sentences are very light. The first time a person gets sentenced, it counts in their favor because they are seen as a responsible person.” Domestic violence falls awkwardly between cracks in legislation: it should qualify as “torment” under Article 117 of the Russian Criminal Code because of its repeated and systematic nature, and should therefore be punishable by three years in prison, argues this year’s shadow report by ANNA. But in Russian law, battery inflicted during an argument and arising from personal hostility cannot qualify as “torment.”

Not a crime

Against this backdrop of silence, backward legislation and the statistical vacuum, some contend the problem is evolving. In November The Moscow Times cited “women’s rights advocates” who claimed that more children are being beaten and killed by fathers taking revenge against their mothers. The ANNA report recounted a brutal murder in Tatarstan of a five-year-old boy by his father, who stabbed him to death to “settle a score” with his wife, whom he suspected of infidelity.

Ponarina was reluctant to confirm a possible pattern. “We haven’t had to deal with any of these kinds of cases. There probably are cases like this, but I can’t say for sure that this is a trend. Of course, children are manipulated in order to somehow manipulate women and victims of domestic violence. As for the trend of murder, I just can’t say.”

Vinogorova is currently in court with her husband over rights to see the children. “He’s demanding in court that we allow him to see the children. I explain that I cannot just sit back and allow a person like him to see them. I have to protect my children. They themselves are scared after all this,” she said.

An army of one

Even if women do manage to escape dependence on their partners, pressing charges is a complex process, which lawyers and NGO workers agree favors the defendant. Under Russian law domestic violence cases are not handled by the state, and victims must act as the prosecutors themselves because violence at home is seen as a private affair that the state should not encroach on. “Just imagine for a moment how few women have a legal education and know what to do or even how to write statements. If it’s a trial, it is the woman who has to prosecute. If you then bear in mind that this woman has been living with the defendant for several years or even many years, or that they have children together, it’s clear that it’s going to be really difficult. On top of that, she has to prosecute someone she is scared of,” said Parshin.

After negotiating with the Federation Council in spring of this year, NGO workers thought that they had won a breakthrough when the government appeared to have agreed to draft a better approach to deal with domestic violence. Pisklakova-Parker said the government was still working on it, but there are still major disagreements between the government and the NGO sector. “The Russian government’s position was that we do have legislation that covers domestic violence. They referred to the Criminal Code, where articles cover physical abuse regardless of where it takes place (either at home or in public). They don’t really understand what domestic violence is,” she said.

Perhaps stuttering political will on this subject will gain momentum after president Medvedev launched his campaign to protect women and children to halt the population drop in his State of the Nation address. Parshin said that over his five years of working personally in the field, there were noticeable steps being made in the right direction, and held out optimism. “Ten years ago, no one even admitted there was a problem,” he said. “Now, years later, there is more awareness thanks to the work of rights workers—people like Pisklakova-Parker. They’ve done a lot for this problem to be heard and recognized. Domestic violence is a problem everywhere in the world, but elsewhere they got onto it earlier so more has been done about it. We recognized it only recently and the approach to this question is already changing.”  

By Tom Balmforth

http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Culture+%26+Living&articleid=a1293034376

Almost 70% of women suffer from domestic violence in Ukraine

According to the Kyiv Health Center, 35-50% of women get to hospitals with physical injuries as victims of domestic tyranny.68% of Ukrainian women are subject to bullying in the family. They suffer from domestic violence more often than from robberies, rapes and car accidents. combined.

According to the City State Administration, over nine months of the year, 5,123 women, victims of domestic violence, approached various bodies and establishments of Kyiv for help. At the same time, a part of the affected women does not apply to the police due to the fear of publicity and revenge. 

See http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/index.php?id=148&listid=134198 for more information. 

16-day campaign against gender violence kicks off in Ukraine

The annual All-Ukrainian Campaign ‘16 Days against Gender Violence’ kicks off today to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

 

A press release from the EU Delegation to Ukraine said the campaign would continue for the next ten days until December 10, following a yearly tradition.  

 

As part of the campaign, the EU-funded ‘Equal Opportunities and Women’s Rights in Ukraine Programme’ is organising a number of activities in the Ukrainian media, including a wide-scale information campaign with day TV shows series Easy To Be A Woman.

A press conference with the Minister of Family, Youth and Sports earlier this week highlighted the joint activity of the Government of Ukraineand international organizations, including the EU Delegation and the UN Office in Ukraine,on the elimination of this problem, as well as about specific activities of the Campaign in 2010.

 

A series of TV shows on domestic violence and its elimination have been organised jointly with the National TV Company of Ukraine and are being aired between 22 and 26 November on the First National Channel, the press release said, including a programme list for the shows.

 

The EU is at the forefront of the struggle to end violence against women, supporting third countries in their efforts to counter what is “probably the most widespread human rights violation of our time”, High Representative Catherine Ashton said today in a statement marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

 

Promotion and protection of women’s rights figures highly in EU external policy, an EC press release said. It is systematically discussed between the EU and its partner countries, in particular in the context of EU human rights dialogues and consultations, and dedicated Sub-Committees on democracy and human rights. EU Guidelines prioritise women's rights in EU human rights policy in third countries and provide guidance on the way the EU reacts to specific individual cases of human rights violations. (ENPI Info Centre)

 

see http://enpi-info.eu/maineast.php?id=23310&id_type=1&lang_id=450 for more information.

United Nations Elects Executive Board of New Agency for Women’s Empowerment

Member States today took the next step in enabling the newly-created United Nations agency on gender equality and women’s empowerment to begin its work by electing countries to serve on its Executive Board.

The elections, held in the 54-member Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), will enable the new Board to come together prior to the official establishment on 1 January 2011 of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

The 41 board members were selected on the following basis: 10 from Africa, 10 from Asia, 4 from Eastern Europe, 6 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 5 from Western Europe and 6 from contributing countries.

Elected from the African Group were Angola, Cape Verde, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Lesotho, Libya, Nigeria and Tanzania.

Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Republic of Korea and Timor-Leste were elected from among the Asian States.

Estonia, Hungary, Russia and Ukraine were elected from among the Eastern European States, while Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Sweden were elected from the Western European and Other States.

In addition, the Council elected Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada and Peru from the group of Latin American and Caribbean States.

The Council also elected Mexico, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, United Kingdom and United States from among the “contributing countries,” for three-year terms beginning today.

The 35 members elected from the regional groups will serve two-year and three-years, beginning today, as determined by the drawing of lots.

Chosen to serve two-year terms were Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, El Salvador, Estonia, France, India, Italy, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Tanzania and Timor-Leste.

Angola, Cape Verde, China, Congo, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Grenada, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Peru, Republic of Korea, Sweden and Ukraine were selected to serve three-year terms.

Headed by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, UN Women is the merger of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI), and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW).

The new agency was established on 2 July by a unanimous vote of the General Assembly to oversee all of the world body’s programmes aimed at promoting women’s rights and their full participation in global affairs. One of its goals will be to support the Commission on the Status of Women and other inter-governmental bodies in devising policies.

It will also aim to help Member States implement standards, provide technical and financial support to countries which request it, and forge partnerships with civil society. Within the UN, it will hold the world body accountable for its own commitments on gender equality.

In carrying out its functions, UN Women will be working with an annual budget of at least $500 million — double the current combined resources of the four agencies it comprises.

Reprinted from UN News.

The Women’s Perspective: Breaking the Silence on International Crimes Against Women - Pembroke, MA - Pembroke Mariner & Reporter

The Women’s Perspective: Breaking the Silence on International Crimes Against Women - Pembroke, MA - Pembroke Mariner & Reporter

Some readers may find the following facts and information disturbing and difficult to read, and for that I apologize. However, it is crucial that we acknowledge the realities of what is happening to millions of women all over our world on a daily basis. The torture, suffering, shame, and hopelessness that women endure at the hands of oppression must end.

At least 1 in every 3 women globally has been beaten, forced into sex, slavery, trafficking and multiple forms of abuse. That means that as you sit safely in your own environment reading this article, women are being tortured all over the world. They are being stripped of their humanity. Their souls and spirits are being violently stripped away through physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and financial abuse at the hands of monsters. These monsters view women as being subservient, worthless whores who are disposable commodities. These monsters derive from all different cultures and backgrounds. They are living within our global communities in epidemic proportions, including the United States.

My mission is to never stay silent on such issues. It is an ugly subject to discuss, one that many shy away from. However, that is exactly why it must be discussed. We must remove the stigmas, shame and secrecy that are attached to violence against women. The more we talk about it, the more exposed the subject becomes.

Violence against women is not a gender issue; it is a human right issue. Women deserve the same opportunity to achieve equal economic, social, cultural and political rights. They deserve to live without fear. Living free from violence is a human right. Women should be able to live safely in their communities without becoming victims of violent crimes.

It should be every women's human right to achieve free will, receive an education, obtain financial stability, marry, bear children, have control over their own bodies, become politically involved, and enjoy religious and culture freedom as every human being should. Women should be creating and thriving throughout our world not surviving and recovery from inhumane atrocities forced upon them.

In an effort to acknowledge the "elephant in the room", I have decided to outline some of the most abhorrent crimes against women on a global level.

While there is no doubt that we are all aware at least on some level that there are terrible things happening to women, I am quite sure that it is not possible to grasp the true horror of this subject without examining it fully. Some examples of the torturous practices worldwide include bride kidnapping, honor killing, bride burning, acid attacks, female genital mutilation, human trafficking, and ritual servitude. While most of these atrocities occur in other parts of the world, our own United Stated has experienced them as well.

Bride kidnapping is a common practice in countries like Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. What happens is that when the time comes for a man to be married in Kyrgyzstan, a man or his family will pick a woman and she will be kidnapped. The prospective husband and his male relatives or friends abduct the girl and take her to the man’s family home, where the older women of the family try to convince the victim to accept the marriage. Some families will keep the girl hostage to break her will; while others will let her go if she remains defiant.

The kidnapped woman’s family may also become involved in the process, either urging the woman to stay if the marriage is believed to be socially acceptable or advantageous for the prospective bride and her family, or opposing the marriage on various grounds and helping liberate the woman.

In countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, the act of bride kidnapping is quite brutal, where the man kidnaps the woman and proceeds to rape her. The family of the woman either then feels obliged to consent to the union, or is forced to do so when the kidnapper impregnates her, as no one else would marry a pregnant woman.

An honor killing is defined by Amnesty International as “a punitive murder, committed by members of a family against a female member of their family whom the family and/or wider community believes to have brought dishonor upon the family.” Honor killings may occur when a woman refuses an arranged marriage, being the VICTIM of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce even from an abusive husband, or committing adultery. Any behavior that is deemed “dishonorable” to the family is therefore justified whereas the act would otherwise be deemed murder. UNICEF has reported that in India, more than 5,000 brides are killed annually because their marriage dowries are considered insufficient. As of 2004, honor killings have occurred within parts of various countries, such as Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Uganda, United Kingdom and the United States.

Another practice that is seen is known as bride burning. This act is a form of domestic violence practiced in parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries located on or around the Indian subcontinent. In these cases, a man or his family douses the wife with some type of flammable liquid, usually gasoline or kerosene. She is then set on fire, eventually leading to her death.

Acid attacks are a violent phenomena that primarily occur in Afghanistan. Perpetrators of these attacks throw acid at their victims (usually at their faces), burning them. The consequences include permanent scarring of the face and body as well as potential blindness.

Perhaps the most recognizable facet of these crimes is that of human trafficking.

Since the fall of the iron curtain, the impoverished former Eastern bloc countries such as Albania, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have been identified as major trafficking source countries for women and children. Young women and girls are lured by the promise of money and work and then reduced to sexual slavery, sent to other countries never to be heard from again.

It is estimated that 2/3 of women trafficked for prostitution annually come from Eastern European countries; three-quarters have never worked as prostitutes before. The major destinations are Western Europe (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK and Greece), the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates), Asia, Russia and the United States. An estimated 500,000 women from Central and Eastern Europe are working in prostitution in the EU alone.

Ritual servitude occurs mainly in parts of Ghana where traditional religious shrines take human beings, usually young virgin girls, as payment for services, or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member—almost always a female.

These shrine slaves serve the priests, elders and owners of a traditional religious shrine without remuneration and without their consent, although the consent of the family or clan may be involved. Those who practice ritual servitude feel that the girl is serving the god or gods of the shrine and is married to the gods of the shrine.

If a girl runs away or dies, she must be replaced by another girl from the family. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth girl in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as small as the loss of trivial property.

As disturbing as these facts are, there is still hope for change around the world. Currently there is a piece of legislature in the U.S. aimed at making violence against women and girls around the world an unexceptable crime. The biparitsan International Violence Against Women Act will enhance our government's ability to respond to victims of international crimes against women as previously mentioned.. In addition, it would provide aid and resources to women groups around the world working to end such horrific violence providing; prevention programs, building women and childrens educational, financial, political and social realities into a thriving future filled with possibilities.

Please never stay silent about such social issues. Silence is the killer. Just by informing friends and family members about these crimes against women throughtout our world (including the U.S.) is being part of the solution. Let's help turn millions of women and children's pain into power! For more information please refer to Amnesty International.

By Gretchen Jones

GateHouse News Service

Posted Oct 11, 2010

Sources: Amnesty International, listverse.com, V-day, Human Trafficking.org

Copyright 2010 Pembroke Mariner & Reporter. Some rights reserved

Fight club

Imagine the Girl Guides with racier uniforms accessorised with pickaxes, chains and scythes and what have you got? Answer: a women's youth movement sweeping Ukraine

By Sally Howard
Published: 7:00AM BST 12 Sep 2010


It's 5.30am and dawn is breaking in the Carpathian Mountains. Morning mist garlands the mountaintops as the sun rises over a view that's as old as the hills: headscarved babushkas push carts of hay by hand, white-tailed eagles circle drowsily above and the air is scented by the ancient spruces of Europe's last stretch of virgin forest. Only the rumble of cargo trains driving west to Hungary disturbs this bucolic scene. That and the peals of three bikini-clad girls as they jump into the frigid Dniester, the fast-flowing river that courses south across the length of eastern Ukraine to the Black Sea.

Katya Rebrova, 22, Yulia Serafiniora, 20, and Daria Rodnar, 15, have been up since 4.30am, practising a peculiar martial art involving weapons that closely resemble agricultural scythes; the curved blades slice though the crisp morning air as they swivel and high-kick with blurring speed. Their dress, before they strip for their daily pre-breakfast dip, is similarly exotic to Anglo-Saxon eyes – the baggy tight-ankled trousers of the traditional Cossack warrior teamed with cropped sports tops and swinging plaited hair. It's a striking mixture of ancient and modern that embodies the Asgarda, a new women's movement that – against steep odds – is attracting attention in Ukraine, where 80 per cent of the unemployed are women and domestic violence is common.

I am joining the Asgarda – the name derives from Asgard, the city of the gods in Norse myth – at the focal point of their year, a two-month-long summer camp. Here, girls and women from across the country meet to study history, life skills and the aforementioned Cossack martial art, Bojovyj Hopak, where not only scythes but Japanese chained nunchucks and pickaxes are regularly wielded. The Girl Guides was never like this.

The drive here, earlier in the week, had taken me deeper and deeper into silent, thickly forested mountain terrain – three hours from Ukraine's second city, Lviv, but almost another world. I had arrived to an unusual scene. Besides a wooden cabin, the group's founder, Katerina Tarnouska, a 36-year-old single mother, was pacing the length of a line-up of seven- to 10-year-old girls like a dyspeptic squadron leader, urging them to punch their small fists into the air towards invisible assailants, or drop to their hands and knees for press-ups.

A former PE teacher, Tarnouska is a formidable presence – handsome Slavic bone structure and wheatish skin accented by a tattooed bicep bearing the insignia of the Ukrainian National Movement (a centuries-old resistance movement to Ukraine's many occupiers). Yet her 200 followers clearly dote on her rousing brand of girl power. Between issuing imperious orders she told me that her charges were heirs to the Amazons: the proud warrior women first celebrated by the Ancient Greeks, said to have hailed from Scythia, to the east of modern-day Ukraine.

Tarnouska set up the Asgarda in 2004 amid the heady days of the Orange Revolution – the youth-led regime change that brought the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency and launched the career of the glamorous economist Yulia Tymoshenko, who became Ukraine's first female prime minister in 2005. Though this period was a catalyst for a national optimism that in part persists, many of its real gains have now been lost, especially for women.

In February 2010 Yushchenko's government – dogged by corruption scandals and blamed for an economic crisis – was voted out in favour of Viktor Yanukovych, whose government has pursued reactionary politics with brio, clamping down on media freedom and – famously – justifying his all-male cabinet with the line, 'Reforms do not fall into women's competence.'

Yet, in forming the Asgarda, Tarnouska was motivated not by politics but a desire to empower Ukrainian women. 'I wanted girls to gain confidence to be themselves, and not just quiet wives working, working and swallowing all the time their own dreams – the lot of our mothers and grandmothers under the Soviets,' she explains. 'As a nation, too, we're unsure of ourselves, our national identity and history having been suppressed for so many years, or rewritten to fit the communist ideal.'

The way to counter this epidemic of lost confidence, Tarnouska felt, was to remind Ukrainian girls of their nationhood, of powerful figures in history such as the Cossacks. This warrior race flourished for four centuries and was fêted for its strength, martial skills and fearless independence in the face of the Russian tsars (as well as for its prodigious vodka intake). For many modern Ukrainians the Cossacks have become emblems of a golden era, when Ukraine was free from Moscow's control.

There's certainly no lack of confidence among the girls here today. Now in its fifth year, the summer camp is an opportunity for older members such as Katya, Yulia and Daria to be joined by younger girls, from seven up, who come for two-week courses in 'Asgarda skills'.

Lessons are diverse, ranging from yoga and handicrafts to martial arts and Ukrainian national dance. The older girls receive masterclasses from visiting experts – including Volodymyr Stepanovytch, a Soviet former karate master – and the younger girls are taken on afternoon excursions to historical sites. Prayers are also an integral part of camp life, held before meals and bedtime, a non-denominational giving of thanks for food and the opportunity to learn. Asgarda membership is free, although those who can afford it pay about 150 Ukrainian hryvnia, or £9, a day for the camp's bed and board.

I pull up a chair with Katya, Yulia and Daria one evening. Over cups of sweetened black tea, Katya talks excitedly of her dream of training in film and, eventually, being part of developing a viable Ukraine cinema. 'There is nothing on our screens that helps our self-image as Ukrainians,' she says. 'Freedom of the press improved after the revolution, but now it's going back to the way it was, promoting Russian ideologies. And our films are the worst action movies produced by the USA – with pointless violence and swearing. I want to propose an alternative that helps children to learn something of our Ukrainian history. There's so much to be proud of, but we never see it reflected back on our screens.' The hubris of youth, perhaps, but expressed so gutsily you suspect she'll achieve it.

The others, too, have big ambitions – Daria wants to work to battle the culture of corruption in local politics, and Yulia hopes 'to be a mother and a career woman, but also – always – an Asgarda'. She and Katya are both in relationships. What do their partners make of the girls' commitment to the group? 'My boyfriend is proud of me,' says Katya. 'Mine too,' says Yulia, 'he sees the Asgarda as part of a development of Ukrainian national pride and he also practises martial arts.' None of the girls sees a tension in wanting to marry and start a family and also be members of the Asgarda. 'Although I understand it might be hard work to have a family if I have ambitions too,' says Katya.

I ask the girls what they have gained from their time as members. 'One of the sad facts of modern Ukrainian life is sexual violence, and this worried me as a teenager,' says Yulia, who has been an Asgarda for five years. (Indeed, 49 per cent of Ukrainian women have suffered domestic violence, according to a recent report by the European Union and UN Development Programme.) 'I joined the Asgarda because I wanted to protect myself. Then I saw that I was developing in confidence, and becoming a strong woman, and I don't think I understood how much I'd been holding myself back.'

Daria, a member since she was nine, nods enthusiastically. 'I joined precisely because I wanted to find my confidence. There are a lot of problems among young people in Ukraine: drugs, unemployment and promiscuity. I saw the Asgarda as a positive alternative. My parents say they noticed a huge difference in me as soon as I joined.'

The girls' eclectic costume is detailed in the Asgarda manual, an eccentric tome that runs from traditional sewing techniques to self-defence with an umbrella (the salient point being, it seems, to jab at the assailant's crotch). The loose-fitting trousers (similar to harem pants) are a nod to the Cossacks but – importantly – practical fighting wear. Embroidered white shirts – which the girls wear for competitions and formal gatherings such as their annual winter performance of martial arts in Lviv – also bear a rich cultural significance using symbols such as the kalyna berry, said to confer prosperity and luck.

A combination of sports and traditional attire is the preferred daywear for most Asgarda at camp, although a few girls work a racier fantasy-warrior look of leather wrist-straps and skirts. Make-up is minimal, shoes are flat for practicality, and hair is worn plaited in the traditional Ukrainian style, or sometimes shaved by way of an initiation ritual. To understand how much of a statement this aesthetic is you need only walk a few minutes around any modern city in Ukraine. The clothing favoured by most young women is tight and bright, with bunion-inducing heels.

Ekaterina Stupak, a 34-year-old former government worker living in Kiev, explains the provenance of the 'Ukraine look' as she sees it: 'It's everywhere and it's seen as trendy,' she says. 'You go into a government office here and the women have these long painted nails, heels and miniskirts. My idea is that it comes from competition. After the Soviet regime the gender balance was skewed as so many men had been sent to Siberia, or killed in pogroms, particularly in the west of Ukraine, where resistance to the regime was strongest.'

Ukrainian popular culture seems to bear this out. The current must-see television show is a documentary series called Svitske Zhyttya, or Posh Life, where rich Ukrainians – mainly industrial oligarchs or children of politicians – showcase their lavish lifestyles and flamboyantly dressed model wives. The message to young Ukrainian women is clear: the ultimate prize is to snare a moneyed man. This priority is expressed, too, in the Kiev nightclub scene. Strip shows are integral to every city nightclub, with chains such as Pink Unicorn offering striptease alongside a diet of Western and Ukrainian dance music. Young women go 'oligarch hunting' – dressing up to the nines to prowl around these venues or Kiev's well-heeled shopping districts during the day. They walk back and forth,' says Stupak, 'swaying their hips in these tall heels'.

'It's sad, but many women feel they have little choice but to pursue a rich man,' says Anna Hustol, from the Ukrainian 'female rights group' Femen, which has made headlines with direct actions such as 'Ukraine is not a brothel', a demonstration against sex trafficking and sexual tourism to Ukraine. 'Endemic gender discrimination means women in Ukraine get lower salaries, fewer opportunities to move up the career ladder and even fewer opportunities to get a good job or a good education. This is seen in the stark fact that unemployment rate of women is very high compared with men with the same educational background.'

Gender relations in Ukraine are indubitably strained. Yet the existence of groups such as Femen and the Asgarda shows how far Ukrainian women have come in breaking free from the constraints of the Soviet regime, under which feminism was despised as 'bourgeois ideology'.

Indeed, a few days spent with the happy, politicised and ambitious young women of the Asgarda made me wonder if British girls too wouldn't benefit from such a regime. With many young British women aspiring to the Katie Price lifestyle, perhaps a movement that empowered girls to be martial artists, rather than sex objects, would be a useful antidote.

After a pathetic attempt to master a few scythe skills, I ask the Asgarda what they'd say to young women in Britain. 'To believe in themselves,' says Daria, 'and that women are as strong as men.'

'You are not just a housewife or a girlfriend or an object to look at,' Katya adds, 'you are a person and you can choose your own path.'

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/ready+high+heels+fight+domestic+violence/3504648/story.html

Colts help fight domestic violence

This is kind of a cool idea... I didn't think that the 8 phones sitting in a drawer in my parents' kitchen could be put to better use :)

Sunday, August 15, 2010 11:00 AM
Cell Phone Gameday Collection 
View Gameday Collections Section

On Sunday, August 15, the Indianapolis Colts are teaming up with the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) to collect cell phones and monetary donations prior to kickoff of the Colts vs. 49ers game. From 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., volunteers will be stationed outside each Lucas Oil Stadium gate. Fans are encouraged to bring any new or used cell phones that they no longer need to donate for victims of domestic violence. All phones will be re-programmed and used as 9-1-1 emergency phones for women and children in the Indianapolis area.