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Domestic violence hurts 1 in 2 women here

Affects all social structures, education levels and financial situations

The 72-year-old woke up on a sunny morning, picked up an axe leaning against a garden wall, went back inside and struck her sleeping husband twice in the forehead, killing him instantly.

They had been married for 50 years.

“Then I took a shower, dressed nicely, took my pills and went to  the police to report myself,” the tiny woman with short grey hair recalls of that fatal morning in March 2008.

Now an inmate of the only women’s prison in Serbia, built in 1874 in the eastern town of Pozarevac, she uses the false name Milica to protect her family and says her husband abused, beat and tortured her “for decades”.

“I couldn’t stand it any more. It was either him or me.”   

“I immediately knew it was wrong, but it was already too late,” she told AFP tearfully in a bleak prison visitor’s room, adding in whisper: “I so much regret it”.

Her wrinkled face evidence of a hard life, Milica said she tolerated years of abuse because she did not want her two daughters   — now 51 and 49 years old — to live without a father.

“But as they grew up and become independent, it got worse and finally became unbearable. The more I hoped it would be better, the  worse it was,” she told AFP.

Although she reported the violence to the police “a number of times,” there was “no serious reaction except a few warnings to him  to calm down,” Milica says.

And she hid the abuse from her two daughters, now “both well educated, employed, with grown up children of their own”.

“I did not want to bother them and get them worried,” she said.

Milica was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in prison for first-degree murder.

She is not alone.

About one-in-ten of Serbia’s female prisoners are serving time for murdering abusive partners.

“They usually do so after enduring years, even decades of violence, after their children grow up and leave home,” said Milena  Jerotijevic of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HOPS).

“These are women who are in their 60s or 70s and have never even  been fined before,” said Jerotijevic, who has compiled a report on the women’s prison.

“Harsh prison sentences for women victims of years-long torture is, to say the least, inappropriate,” she insisted.

A recent study showed that 54% of women in Serbia have experienced some sort of domestic abuse, said Snezana Lakicevic Stojacic, state secretary for labour and social policy in charge of  gender equality and combating domestic violence.

“More than 6,500 cases of domestic violence have been reported since the start of this year, almost 30% more than in 2010,”  she told AFP.

She insisted the rise did not necessarily indicate more abuse, but perhaps better reporting in Serbia — a still largely traditional and patriarchal Balkan country where such topics are taboo.

“People have been encouraged to report it and to ask for protection” from domestic violence, she said.

The Serbian government approved a plan earlier this year to combat domestic violence, and is to pass a protocol by the end of the year to streamline the handling of family abuse cases between different government departments.

Implementation of the framework will “take time”, said Lakicevic  Stojacic, stressing politicians could not afford to ignore the problem, at risk of being “widely criticised by the public”.

On Friday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence  Against Women, Serbia will launch a 16-day campaign “aimed at raising public awareness that it is the duty of every individual to  report violence, not to turn their backs on it,” she added.

In 2011 alone, 44 women have died as a result of domestic violence so far, mostly by current or former partners or husbands  — up from 32 in 2010.

Prison warder Anka Gogic Mitic said the women serving sentences for crimes committed against abusive partners were “from all social  structures, education levels and financial situations”.   

Prison therapist Slavica Stojicevic said many women saw no choice “but to commit murder, even though they ... are aware it is a wrong choice”.

The HOPS has been campaigning for judges to give more weight to past abuse as a mitigating factor in determining prison sentences.

It has also launched an action to help convicts seek pardon or early release, with the backing of Serbia’s most prominent female politicians and activists.

Milica hopes to be among those pardoned, or at least have her sentence commuted to house arrest.

“I am 75 and I only dream about going home, being with my children and grandchildren. Eight more years at my age is far too long,” she says.

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