Dharamshala: Domestic violence is an issue tackled globally by governments through stringent legislation but until four years ago, there were no laws protecting women in China against domestic violence. There are still no laws prohibiting marital rape or sexual harassment.
In China, when survivors of domestic violence summon the courage to go to the police, they often hear one thing: That’s a personal matter, go home.
Lhamo was told the same by the Jinchuan county police when she filed complaints against her ex-husband, a Chinese national named Tang, for domestic violence. Her repeated pleas for protection were ignored each time.
Later in mid-September, Lhamo’s ex-husband broke into her house armed with a knife and petrol and set her on fire while she was streaming a live video on Chinese video app, Douyin. All of these happened while some 300 followers of Lhamo were watching her live video.
Lhamo had sustained burns on 90 percent of her body and ultimately after two weeks of fighting for her life, Lhamo succumbed to her injuries on 30 Sept.
A young Tibetan woman from Tibet’s Ngaba region, Lhamo was a budding internet celebrity with over 900,000 followers on Douyin who were fascinated by her mountain life. Although she grew up in poverty, Lhamo was a self-reliant woman who made a living picking herbs in the mountains which she often shared online.
The horrifying case of Lhamo, one of the many disturbing cases of domestic violence reported in China, reflects the failure of China’s legal system in protecting women against domestic violence even when they repeatedly seek help, as Lhamo did.
‘The system failed her by not enforcing by the Chinese Domestic Violence Act 2016 and not acting on the various reports that Lhamo filed during the course of her abuse by her ex-husband,” said the CTA’s Women Empowerment Desk, speaking exclusively to tibet.net.
What was more abysmal in this case of “extreme intimate partner violence”, according to the WED was the “inadequacy and absence of China’s legal system in protecting women from such gender-based violence”.
Lhamo’s situation could have been prevented if the local authorities were aware of the cycle of violence and proper actions were taken in the first place, said the CTA instituted body that regularly responds to domestic and gender based violence in the diaspora Tibetan community.
While Lhamo’s case drew the attention of many in the diaspora community on the issue of Intimate partner violence, netizens in China started calling for stronger enforcement of the domestic violence law using the hashtag #LhamoAct.
Shortly after the hashtag #Lhamo Act started trending on Weibo, it was blocked by censors.
Possibly helped by public attention and outcry for justice, the Jinchuan police finally begun the investigation, and the suspect was arrested.
Just a day after Lhamo’s death, Xi Jinping told a United Nations conference on women that the “protection of women’s rights and interests must become a national commitment.” But Lhamo’s plight remains tragically common in China.
According to reports, since China passed its first Anti-Domestic Violence Law in 2016, atleast 1,214 had died from domestic violence by the end of 2019. Chinese official statistics on violence against women largely remain unavailable.
Some Chinese researchers also point towards CCP’s paramount political obsession over maintaining ‘social stability’ as a contributing factor to its weak law enforcement against domestic violence.
However, under international law including the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which China ratified in 1980, the Chinese government has the responsibility to protect women’s rights and treat the safety of domestic violence survivors as a top priority.
“It’s high time to recognise the prevalence of domestic violence and work towards prevention, prohibition and redressal of gender based violence. It is also important to support and believe the story of the survivors so that they could trust the service provided by the government, where they don’t blame themselves for the situation they are in, where more survivors could come out and talk more about the prevalence of the issue,” said the WED.