3 Recent Events and Case Studies
In recent years the cases of violence against women and femicides in Azerbaijan became more publicized through traditional media outlets and social media. Compared to the previous years, attitudes towards violence against women, even though not always adequate, turned into a subject of public discussions much more frequently. Yet, such cases happen to be covering a very small part of the actual number of incidents involving domestic violence or femicides throughout the country. Although the official statistics are rarely reliable, even they acknowledged the growth in numbers, for example in 2017 the state reported that of the total 1,031 victims of domestic violence crimes perpetrated in 2016 in Azerbaijan, a great majority, approximately 807, were women. In 2018 these numbers were 915 women victims of domestic violence of 1,221 registered cases. The numbers of rape victims increased from 20 to 38 and then to 23 from 2016-2018 accordingly.
Similarly, in the past few years the number of suicides continued to rise in Azerbaijan: for example, in 2016 total of 121 women committed suicide and 69 women attempted suicide, as opposed to five years before, when the figures were 89 and 37 correspondingly. As reported by media, within 9 months of 2018, there were 135 attempted suicides, of which 112 were women and 11 young girls (minors).Many instances of suicide and attempted suicide take place as a result of being continuously subjected to violence. According to the state statistical data, numbers for 2018 show that of the total cases 1,175 cases of domestic violence, 47 were murders, 27 attempted murders and 2 inciting to suicide. The prosecution opened 55 cases of sexual assault in 2018 as opposed to 60 and 52 in 2017 and 2016 accordingly.
According to the Azerbaijan State Committee on Statistics, 915 women fell victim to domestic violence in 2018, 42 fatally. Only during the first half of 2018 the number of recorded domestic violence cases reached a total of 558, which was 1.6 per cent less than the previous year. Around 89,8 percent of all cases were registered as ‘deliberate infliction of minor damage to health’, meaning abuse without serious injury. About 4,8 per cent were far more serious, including deliberate or attempted homicide, about 3,2 percent being intentional infliction of serious damage to health and about 0,2 percent of inciting to suicide. According to the state figures, most of the victims were women reaching 77,7 percent, while 1.4 per cent were children and minors.
Whether these numbers reflect reality is hard to say, because the accurate data is difficult to acquire. The statistics are not reflecting the actual picture as the state agencies such as Prosecutor General’s Office, Ministry of Interior and other line agencies are not consistent in registering and reporting domestic violence, whereas in the majority of cases, women don’t seek help. A representative of the Azerbaijan State Committee for Family, Women, and Children’s Affairs acknowledged that the Committee receives somewhere between 800–850 cases on average per year.
Media reports turn out to be more reliable. For example, according to an online media source, in 2019 about 184 women became victims of domestic violence, of which 54 were murdered and the rest received various bodily injuries. The low numbers are explained with lack trust to the law-enforcement agencies, even to some incidents of facing more violence for reporting the incident to the police. In one of such cases, the woman was beaten at the Mingachevir Police Unit. The violence at times was so unbearable, that women chose to throw themselves out of window. Two of such incidents happened in 2019, one of the victims broke her legs, the other also received heavy injuries.
A majority of the cases in the most recent female homicide statistics (2109) are related to beatings and murders perpetrated by the husbands. For example, On 7 October, Leyla Abdullayeva, a mother of three, was stabbed twenty times by her husband outside a subway station in downtown Baku. The following day, Natavan Mustafayeva, a single mother of four was attacked by her ex-husband while on her way to work. After stabbing his victim from behind, the perpetrator attempted to slit her throat. The day after, news of two more victims made headlines: Aynura Abdullayeva died in hospital after being beaten by her husband and Javahir Akbarova died after receiving a heavy blow to her head. A total of 12 cases of violence against women, among them 4 fatal, were reported in the first week of October alone.
On December 26, 2019, Nurana Aliyeva, 24, was beaten and killed by her husband in Zabrat district of the country’s capital. To avoid being seen by the people, the murderer threw her body in the bushes on the side of the road.
With the reports of domestic violence and homicides against women reaching the general public, the discussions of these incidents also brought to light the actual attitudes towards gender-based violence and in general discrimination against women:
- Usually public condemnation follows publication of the information about woman being beaten. It is widely believed that a woman should be silent at all times. In a society with a strong male domination, a woman who does not tolerate being beaten, abused, including being psychologically abused, is being shamed, victim-blamed and condemned by a significant number of people believing that her rebellion and violation of a silence code, is a breach of national moral norms and is meant to destroy the institution of family.
- Even when a woman is murdered by her husband, or her father or brother, the questions circulating among the fellow partisans are usually the following "Who knows what she had done to deserve that?” or “What kind of immoral behavior caused that?”. For example, on October 6, 2015 once the murder of Leyla Abdullayeva, who was killed by her husband in front of her father became a public knowledge, one of the readers responded: “She looks like a decent woman and has her head covered. She doesn’t look like an immoral woman”, thus assuming that if a woman is murdered, her sinful behavior must have justified this crime.
- The factors such as the time and location of murder or battery are considered important during the public discussions and are usually questioned by the public. If a woman was killed at night, the questions such as: "What is a well-behaved woman doing on the street at that time of the night?” is often followed with the statements that “She deserves to be killed". For instance, when a 31-year-old Gulnar Lalayeva told the police that she was beaten by three people in a park in Baku, and that she did not know those who attacked her , the public discussion in social media was evolving around the topic of what she was doing alone in the park at that time of the night.
Similarly, in cases of rape, men are much more likely to believe that a female rape victim “usually did something to put herself in that situation”, as well as that “in some rape cases, women actually want it to happen”. Likewise, some even think that “in any rape case, one would have to question whether the victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation”.
The societal pressure on the victims, applying more prejudice against the victims, blaming them for destroying their families, creates a hostile environment and serves the retraumatizing of already suffering victims of domestic violence.
However, reactions to the reports on domestic violence are not all negative, though. Since 2019, sensitivity and empathy to these cases have increased. Civil society, both lawyers and women's rights activists, feminists have created a new narrative and invited people to more sensitive approach to these cases. For example, in the fall of 2019 and even more so during the rally held on March 8, 2020, one could observe different strata of society attending and demanding justice with more and more young people joining the ranks of domestic violence protesters.
Although, not yet sufficient, the cases of domestic violence are more often than before taken to the law enforcement bodies with the support of the defense attorneys. According to one of the interviewed lawyers, the legal counsel for women facing domestic violence, who reviewed about 50 cases in the past three years, several issues could be identified as common in those cases.
Women very rarely report the cases of domestic violence to police, primarily because of inaction of police or actions that are aggravating the situation. In such cases, the fact that the defense attorney takes the victim to the police and has the case taken seriously by the police becomes a prerequisite of a successful application of the law by the law-enforcement agencies. The lawyer lists the following common features of the appeals from domestic violence victims and provides the cases that are most common in her practice:
- According to the defense lawyer majority of those who are applying to her services for a divorce are doing so because of being subject to domestic violence.
- The victims of domestic violence often face effective loss of custody of children as she often ends up lodging many complaints with the court in order to obtain that custody taken away illegally from the mothers-victims of domestic violence.
- Another legal and existential challenge faced by the women-victims of domestic violence is the non-payment of alimonies. Although courts have established alimony for women looking after their children, ex-husbands do not pay alimony. The enforcement of such decision of the court is ignored by the bailiff and executive authorities.
- Obtaining a security order (protection order, restraining order) is not automatically a guarantee of protection. Even though the defense lawyers file requests for such orders in some of the cases, the enforcement of such decision is not taking place and the violence continues. Only within one month of December 2019, the defense attorney appealed for such an order on 5 occasions.
- For example, in 2019 one of the victims (a) of domestic violence having reported one of multiple cases of attack on her by her partner, a a battery and an attempted murder, faced an immediate reaction of the Absheron District Police Officer to the incident. The police officer that assured her to take action and sent her home, did in fact detain her husband who put a knife to her throat. However, very soon the husband was let free and therefore, the victim of domestic violence had to go into hiding. Only after going to the police together with the defense attorney, this victim finally saw the adequate reaction to the complaint, issued an administrative punishment against the perpetrator, forcing him to leave the household and providing security to the family. However, the victim is suffering from a severe psychological trauma.
- In another case, there was no report on police action against a perpetrator who was violent towards his wife (b), a mother of a minor, gashing cigarette on her and cutting her arms, taking her to the forest and holding her down there.
- In a similar case, another victim (c) of violence faced regular beating, suffered seizures and failed to get pregnant for a long time. She did not report the beatings to her doctors, but eventually divorced her husband, after which was subject to beating by her mother-in-law. On her way home from work she was attacked by her ex-husband and beaten in the broad daylight in the street.
- On another occasion, a victim (d) was subject to regular beatings by her husband who wanted to marry a second wife and for that would regularly resort to violence to a mother of his two sons. One of the occasions the perpetrator tried to suffocate his wife but was pushed by one of his sons trying to protect his mother. The victim managed to bite the aggressor’s arm and let herself out of his grip.
- One of the young victims of domestic violence (e), a resident of a conservative and religious settlement of Nardaran near the capital city, was regularly insulted by her husband for having no education and was beaten severely by her husband, who smacked her head against the wall. After this incident, the victim was hospitalized and treated from the trauma.
- Another victim (f) being a mother of three was severely attacked and beaten by her husband and the in-laws, accusing her of inability to look after children, was eventually thrown out of her house taking the custody of her children.
- In another outrageous case, a mother of two (g) was regularly beaten by her husband and the mother-in-law who made her do heavy physical labor, clean the big houses in the neighborhoods and collect bottles from the trash bins, was kept hungry and was eventually placed in hospital together with her youngest son by her own mother and brother.
- The cases also included irreparable physical damage such as in the case of victim (h), who lost her eyesight on one eye after being subject to systematic beatings. Her eye cannot be operated or treated and on one of the multiple occasions of beating her child managed to call the mother of the victim who came and took both her daughter and her grandchild out of that house to her home.
When it comes to judiciary and legislation related to domestic violence in Azerbaijan, currently the court protection applies only if the perpetrator’s actions contain criminal act and if the acts of violence continue despite the short-term protection orders.
However, even in the case of the criminal offense was established by the court when judicial protection is applicable, the courts choose to reconcile the matter to end the criminal case after identifying that the victim and the aggressor share common property, and that the case may be settled with a light punishment towards the perpetrator. Whereas, on the contrary, after obtaining more information about the victims through this process, the perpetrators gain an opportunity to put more pressure on the victim, which makes the situation even more dangerous for the victim.