Activist: Institutions Dealing with Violence Against Women Exist pro Forma

Violence (Pixabay)

ASTRA NGO communications manager Hristina Piskulidis said on Nov. 26 that the public statements of the state institutions that deal with the problem of violence against women were mostly a case of paying lip service and added that the right moves had not been made to adequately solve the cases that had been current in Serbia over the past year.

Given the way in which such cases were treated by the media, there was frequently a lack of adequate reaction from the institutions, she said. "My personal impression, and I believe also of my fellow activists, is that many of those institutions exist pro forma," Piskulidis told BETA on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marked on Nov. 25. 

She pointed out that it was not all up to the victim and that the victim should not be the only one to report cases of violence.

"We must know, both us activists and the citizens, and the media as well, that the moment a woman gathers the courage to go public with her story, it is our task to believe her, to support her and not to relativize the experience that happened to her, regardless of when it happened. We are here to be her support because of the courage she has shown and because of what happened to her," stressed Piskulidis.

Where domestic violence is concerned, Piskulidis says it escalated during the coronavirus pandemic and last year's state of emergency. "I think that it is only an indicator that the state of emergency drew the essence into the light of day, i.e. that we simply understand that we live in a highly violent society in which women are victims of violence to a much greater extent," she said.