Russia gives ‘green light’ to domestic abuses, says HRW report

MOSCOW: Russian police dismiss victims of domestic violence and a recent softening of the law in this area has left women even more vulnerable, a Human Rights Watch report said.

The report, based on interviews with dozens of victims, details extreme assaults including women being choked, punched and burned by their attackers. Others were pushed off balconies and out of windows.

The report noted “significant gaps in Russian legislation” such as a lack of a separate criminal charge for “domestic violence”, and a culture of victim blaming. Police treated victims “with open hostility”, it said.

And it described how the Russian government recently softened penalties for some domestic violence cases to an administrative fine, as it embraced “traditional values” such as keeping families together whatever the cost.

The 2017 legislative change decriminalised a first offence of battery among family members, which amounted to “a green light for domestic violence”, the report said.

One of the 27 female victims interviewed told HRW how she had been repeatedly beaten by her husband.

She only tried to file a police report when he brought home several axes and a large bag that he said was “for her and her daughter’s body parts”.

But the police “had a laugh and that was it”, said the woman, who ended up fleeing her husband to a different city.

Another woman said she had reported physical abuse to police 20 times but was ignored.

Police only reacted when she responded in self-defence as her husband tried to choke her, the report says.