Concept, reality and statistics
The term femicide entered the public discourse from Latin America, but also from various countries of the third world, which collectively linked brutal violence against women. Feminist discourse will later conceptually define femicide as gender-motivated violence that experiences its most cruel manifestation precisely in the murder of a woman. Even cold statistics, like the one brought to us by UNWomen, are simply chilling. If we take 2020 as a reference year - for which there are exact global data - we arrive at as many as 81.000 women who were killed in the same year. Almost 60% of that number, 47.000 of them, were killed by people close to them: partners, married or cohabiting, or a member of the immediate family. Every 11 minutes - the statistics are devastating evidence of this - one woman, girl, someone's sister or mother, doctor of science or cashier, ends up in such a way. Her life ends at the hands, cold or firearms of someone close to them. Someone, the logic of things dictates, with whom they shared four walls, one period of life, a bed and a table. They shared intimacy with that person, discussed everyday life, and certainly at least the first stages of their joint relationship, which would later turn out to be life-threatening, were pleasant.
Human relationships in any form are nothing but a gamble, which can easily turn one way or the other, but in that game women are much more exposed to losing everything, even their lives. Compared to men, women are also three times more likely to become the object of human trafficking (women - 72%, men 28%). We can easily imagine the fates of these women, which vary from slave labor, forced prostitution, sometimes even forced surrogacy. Their individual tragedies are mostly just part of the devastating statistics, but also an indicator of the reverse side of developed democracies in which their bodies are only objects of entertainment, brutality and perversions. Often death. The fact that as many as 640 million women have experienced some form of violence from a close partner, current or former husband, speaks volumes about sexually motivated violence, which is particularly disgusting. During the Covid crisis, violence within the four walls increased, and this is evidenced by the most internet search engines. How to cover the moles on the face or what are the signs of physical abuse, women from Malaysia, from the Philippines and from Nepal asked search engines in those crisis years much more intensively than before. Despite these numbers, less than 40% of women who experience some form of violence turn to anyone for help, and only 10% turn to the police. There are no data on how many institutional interventions (police, social services, etc.) are successful in protecting women's lives. The statistics, even if they are not complete, indisputably testify to the global trend of violence against women, which is of a pandemic nature.
My name is Nizam
Many, despite the facts, do not see violence against women, which takes its most brutal form in femicide, as something particularly problematic. If we keep in mind that today's man passionately believes in a flat earth, myths about the purity of blood and soil, supernatural forces from Hollywood blockbusters, we should not be surprised that the same contemporary man does not perceive femicide and many other delicate social realities as a problem. Many become aware of femicide and related phenomena within four walls only when they see it with their own eyes. Not even the most morbid scenario, filmic or human, could hardly come up with what the unfortunate Nizama went through in the last hours of her life. Hinjski was kidnapped from his aunt's home, that last safe harbor, brutally beaten in front of his daughter, with the final act of the drama - a brutal execution that was streamed on Instagram.
Tragedies of this scale always have multiple acts, interrelated, a mix of systemic negligence, sham formalism and institutional cowardice, pathological partners with a reputation as dangerous guys, short-tempered and an audience that watched and supported the brutal execution as if it were one of those miserable clips that most often adorn social networks. While she was experiencing the ordeal, her baby was right next to her, witnessing everything. What the mother's pain was like at that moment of complete helplessness, we can only guess. The solidarity that is currently at least declaratively flooding all social spheres, locally and regionally, could become tangible primarily when it materialized in the care of her minor child. The fund for the little one would be perhaps the only concrete gesture of solidarity that is now on everyone's lips.
Nizama's tragedy is not hers alone. Her tragic victim is universal and personifies every woman exposed to violence whose dramas remain anonymous almost forever. Far from the eyes of neighbors who turn their heads, colleagues from work who did not recognize blatant domestic violence, far from institutions whose only purpose is to protect the most vulnerable categories among us. All these defects that we mention now have a name - they are called Nizama. Her pain became public, tangible, it caused reactions, fears and as such reminds of the pain of many other women who remain eternally anonymous and hidden. The rate of femicide in society is reduced only by concrete measures, which are motivated by the fact that the problem of abuse of women exists. And it exists and most of the time we don't see it and we don't perceive it as a problem. Any policy that does not recognize the (in)visible human drama of women in the family and other homes and does not institutionally articulate her protection should be considered a failure. Unfortunately, the majority of Bosnia and Herzegovina is like that. politics dominated by other topics and other interests.
Bonus video:
