DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACT FAVOURS WOMEN

A youth leader in South Wahgi says the Women’s Bill would pave the way for more problems especially among married people.

Morris Pu claimed that many married women were already taking advantage of laws such as those against violence towards women to provoke their husbands to anger and violence. Poor dears.

They became less submissive to their husbands which brought problems to the home.

He said wife bashing was a crime but since the violence against women law was introduced, many women in patriarchal societies were going against traditional laws and taking part in illegal activities such as prostitution.

He said this was causing marriage problems and exposing people to such diseases as HIV/AIDS.  He said the Domestic Violence Act was ruining the typical traditional marriage and cultures.

Among the men charged with bashing their wives was a man who was charged with violence when he found she had been receiving and sending text messages on her mobile phone from her lover.

Mr Pu said that the man had every right to bash his wife but the law still ruled in her favour and the poor man ended up in police custody.

Comment: AIDS Holistics has written extensively on women with mobile phones. But the big picture is wider than that. Men have no right to bash women. Please click:

GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

If men are becoming angry, it is because they can no longer handle wives who are expressing their freedom. Men must not assume that they still have the right to bash wives. They have to be a little more caring and understanding. Violence is not the only way to handle a domestic dispute.

Pu seems to be confused about traditional values. He may think that bride price gives men the right to own their wives like a pig with power of life and death over them. That is not traditional culture.

There is another report on the same page in which Mr Pu was charged with bashing his wife. His statements here might have just a little too much of justifying his own breach of the law. Tell it to the judge, Pu.

Women are undoubtedly finding relief in the legislation. But some have been resorting to prostitution for a long time to obtain food for the family.

Pu is right here. It is the wives selling their bodies that lift the rate of HIV infection. But the basic cause is often the lazy, drunken bums who are their husbands. Now that the new law has been passed, we have men claiming to be the mainstay of their family. Pull the other leg.

Many women have married a man with no land. He wants his wife to supply him with money for beer as he has no employment to earn money.

But the old bashers should go the way of the dodos and dinosaurs within 20 years. Lamb flaps and homebrew will see to that. A new generation of boys is coming through.

Some will have taken Personal Development studies at High School. They may well think that the old bashers are a mob of bush kanakas.