Yana Savchuck was a 36 year old Russian hairdresser,
who lived in Oryol, a city 400 kilometers away from Moscow,
she dated a man who didn't love her
to the point of beating and killing her.
But Yana could have been saved.
When she called the police in November
saying that her husband was going to kill her,
the police officer cast off her cries for help as ridiculous.
"Don’t worry, if he kills you, we will come to examine the body" he said,
as recorded on the victim's phone.
Within forty minutes later, Yana was dead,
beaten by the same man the police refused to arrest.
Personally, I've always been stunned in front of the episodes
of domestic violence and femicides in my country.
I remember that when I was in the last year of primary school,
since I was living in a big city,
just a few of my friends went home completely alone.
One of them in particular,
said that her mum didn’t allow her to do it because she had heard about a girl
who was just two years older than us,
that had been killed while she was coming home from a sport center.
I also remember Fortunata, a 90 year old women I knew,
who lived in a small village in the South of Italy
who thought that it was normal that her husband kept beating her
after 70 years of marriage and wouldn't leave him,
even though her children wanted her to do so.
After I heard about those stories,
I first realized that the reality wasn’t exactly as I expected it to be
or the reality my parents or my teachers believed in:
gender equality is not always real,
and the victims of violence do not always receive help or protection.
A couple years ago,
while skimming over the headlines of the local newspapers
I found out that this issue involves every country around the world.
In the USA every day nearly three women are killed by their intimate partner,
according to the violence policy center;
while in places like Pakistan this phenomenon is endemic.
These articles made me realize that even the law can be unfair
in those terrible situations.
I was startled to discover that domestic violence in Russia
killed at least 14,000 women in 2009,
according to the Duma’s Committee on social defense.
The Official Russian Interior Ministry statistics point to
4 million reported cases of abuse in 2015.
Those statistics do not include the likely high number of unreported cases,
because 90% of the survivors do not report
the violence incidents to the police.
Now, with these high rates,
you would expect that today there would be strict laws punishing the abuse. Right?
Well, that’s not what’s happening.
In 2016, those convicted of abuse charges were given up to two years in prison.
But in 2017, a new law was proposed,
and passed with a large consensus of the Parliament,
that changed the punishment into a fine for the first offense;
then heightened to a criminal charge for the second offense.
But only with an interval of at most one a year.
In other words,
today Russian men are allowed to beat their wife once a year
without being considered criminals.
And on the top of that,
the Orthodox Church and the conservative groups agreed justifying this law
as a measure to preserve traditional family values.
When I first heard about this law, I had two choices:
turn the page as if nothing had happened or care about this issue,
recognizing that even if I live in another country
and in another society and I have never met those women,
I share their stories and their fear,
because as the statistics say, this is likely to happen to me.
So, I decided to look into this further.
What’s the real cause of this change in Russia
and why it might involve me or my country?
The Economist describes it in a 2017 article as a state-sponsored
turn to traditionalism during Vladimir Putin’s 3rd presidential term
that has exposed these fault lines.
Many Russians now embrace the liberal notion of individual rights,
but others are moving in the opposite direction.
As we can see this is a trend that shows up in many countries
where their democracy is not completely affirmed
and where authoritarian leadership want to prove the moral high ground
of their traditional values in front of other countries,
especially western democracies.
Since the approval of the law,
the cases of violence are apparently decreasing.
This happens because now it is much more difficult for a woman
to report her husband.
Policemen often blame the victims,
they don’t help them at all or they ignore them.
And even when they try to help them they are hindered by the law.
If the woman is able to report the violence,
then her husband will probably force her to pay the fine with her money.
But if on the one hand the reported cases are decreasing,
the emergency calls on the other are actually increasing,
according to the data from the Anna violence crisis centre.
So, this law is a way to hide the real situation.
So, if I were a Russian woman experiencing domestic violence,
what would I need to do to be protected?
I would need to call the police, probably more than once,
hoping to be able to speak with someone who doesn’t blame me,
to report the violence for the first time.
After that, my husband would probably force me to pay the fine with my money,
then I would need to call the police another time,
hoping to be able to speak with someone who doesn’t attack me.
Then I would need to report the violence a second time,
maybe then my husband would be arrested and he’ll send me letters from prison
telling that he wants to kill me as soon as he gets out.
Hard to imagine what it takes to accomplish at least one of those steps.
If it were me, would my life decisions be the same? I don’t think so.
Would my friends support me, like they would normally do here and now?
I don’t know, but I don’t think so.
Another reason why a law like this can still exist in 2018
is that unfortunately the progression of society is not always linear
like the scientific progress.
I often hear people saying "Come on! We are in 2018."
but, what do they mean?
They assume that since we are in 2018 everyone is entitled to human rights,
everybody should always be respected and not discriminated
and society should be in constant progression.
I wish it was actually like this.
In science, if a new discovery is correct,
it will be the basis for the next discovery.
But society may always turn backwards;
it happened in France and in other European countries during the 19th century,
when during the Restoration many progressive laws introduced
in the Napoleonic era were suppressed,
it's now happening in Russia and it could happen anywhere else, that's why I care.
I also can't tolerate the fact that the victims are just represented with numbers,
because like Anastasia Potemkina,
an artist who created an amazing artwork project
for all the victims of domestic violence said:
"It's not that I'm trying to speak for them, definitely not,
but the lack of their representation worries me."
Today, I am here because this is not the world I believe in,
the world my parents or my teachers taught me to believe in,
the world that my favorite YouTuber
or the founder of the Women Russian Crisis Centre strive to create.
Today I am here to speak up for Yana, for Veronica,
for Svetlana, for Irina, for Margarita
and for all the other women who can't.
Thank you.