Anna was four months pregnant, but that didn’t stop her husband - who was on active military duty - from beating her. Months earlier, when she had filed an official complaint after her husband had broken her nose, she was pressured by his superiors to withdraw it. She would “embarrass” them.
“I won’t write any complaint, nothing ever works. Everything is pointless, no one will be prosecuted,” Anna (not her real name) told Amnesty International, which today released a report, Not A Private Matter, after two years researching gender-based violence in state-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine. Six years after conflict began in 2014, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine are currently separated by a 420-km “contact line” into areas controlled by the Ukrainian state and those outside of its control.
What Amnesty researchers found was shocking, from fines as low as bus fares for abusers to under-reporting due to a lack of trust in law enforcement and a deep-rooted shame as a result of societal stereotyping. But there were also some positives, including grassroots movements run by women along the contact line, who give lessons in schools on consent and helping survivors collect evidence.
