From SMH
On Monday night, representatives from the Australian government appeared before the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) as part of a current review into Australia's obligations under its treaty. In their submission, our government argued, "As a matter of international law, domestic violence does not fall within the scope of the Convention ... as it is not conduct that is committed by or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
In other words, violence against women does not constitute 'torture'.
If only the article had ended there with the above factual statements.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government's position sparked considerable social media backlash on Monday.
As Rachel Ball from the Human Rights Law Centre explains, this interpretation of international law is patently incorrect. Rather, international law recognises that family and intimate partner violence is not a private matter and that governments have an obligation to install measures to prevent, investigate, punish and redress this criminal behaviour. She says, "Governments' obligation to effectively address domestic violence has long been established under international law and Australia's failure to recognise this is a disappointing backwards step. The outdated view that domestic violence is a private matter between a woman and her partner is one of the reasons that it remains one of the most serious and widespread human rights abuses in Australia."
I don't know if Rachel Ball is being quoted out of context, but Australia did not say that domestic violence is a 'private matter'.
Rather, Australia said that domestic violence does not fall under the definition of torture, which is true.
The CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Kon Karapanagiotidis, took to Twitter yesterday to express eloquent fury about the government's position. In an email exchange with me, he said, "It is deeply disturbing trend we are seeing under the Abbott Government that the abuse and mistreatment of women are not seen as a concern." Referencing the 789 women imprisoned in our detention centres and the fact 1 in 3 women in prison are Indigenous, Karapanagiotidis condemned the Abbott Government as the first in 25 years to argue that the CAT does not apply to violence against women, and called it "a dark day in Australia's history".
Australia did not say violence against women was not a concern. It merely refrained from incorrectly calling something torture when it isn't torture.
The CAT does not apply to 'violence against women'. It applies to torture. Not all violence against women is torture.
We've come a long way from the time when young journalists were instructed not to write about domestic violence. So why does it feel like we still have so far to go?
Is it because you don't know what words mean?
...
I couldn't help but be darkly amused when confronted with this handwringing. Terrorists operate in Australia every day. And innocent people are murdered every week in this country by combatants who rely on their fear to thrive and to control them. But because they act in the privacy of their own homes and in the supposed sanctity of intimate relationships, their violence and criminal behaviour is seen as somehow different.
It's not
somehow different. It
is different.
If I murder an intimate partner, it is not a war crime or crime against humanity. These words have meanings.
In Australia, one woman is murdered every week by her partner or ex-partner - and yet this is never discussed as terrorist behaviour even though by definition it fits into that category.
No, it does not fit the definition of terrorism. Non-political homicide of individuals is not terrorism.
...
That these deeply problematic issues haven't even occurred to the Minister or his colleagues is a telling insight into the lack of understanding this Federal Government has towards the myriad ways men's violence against women presents itself. The passing of such legislation makes them directly culpable in the further perpetration of violence against women, and the bald-faced assertion this week that Australia's obligations to oppose torture and human rights abuses don't encapsulate the quiet, hidden abuse of thousands of its own citizens should cause outrage among everyone.
That's because Australia's international obligations to oppose torture do not include the obligation to redefine any violence against women as torture. The UN itself says (emphasis mine):
UN said:
For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any
act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or
a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a
third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at
the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or
other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or
suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Men's violence against women is one of the most pervasive human rights abuses in the world, and Australia is not an outlier in this reality. One in three women in this country will be subjected to some form of physical violence in their lifetime,
A greater number of men are subjected to assault than women. That does not mean men are being tortured. Not all or even most assault is torture, and it never has been.
and one in five women over the age of 15 will be subjected sexual violence. These statistics rise exponentially when women experience intersectional oppression - disabled women, for example, are up to 90% more likely to be the victims of sexual assault while women living in refugee camps or detention centres face a significantly increased risk of victimisation (in addition to the trauma of having to flee their homelands and live in virtual prisons). Meanwhile, Indigenous women are more likely than non-Indigenous women to experience violence during pregnancy and are ten times more likely to be the victims of domestic homicide.
Domestic homicide is not torture. It does not need to be falsely defined as torture for it to be a concern.
...
In Australia, the federal government is instituting a broad range of measures to address the possible risk of a Jihadist related terror attack, despite the fact not a single person has been killed in this country as a result of this kind of violence. On the other hand, a staggering 61 women have been murdered in domestic homicides this year alone (according to Destroy The Joint's Counting Dead Women project, at the time of writing). Why was the federal government not thinking of them when it instructed representatives to try to weasel out of acknowledging the responsibility in helping to prevent the future murder and brutalisation of Australia's female citizens and asylum seekers?
Because domestic homicide is not torture.
A dark day indeed. And one in which we learned, yet again, exactly what kind of esteem this government holds women in. Which is to say, not very much at all.
A dark day indeed when language is tortured beyond recognition.
But worse, when non-political domestic violence and other violence are redefined as 'torture', it diminishes the experience of actual victims of torture.
