Over the past three decades, the response to domestic violence has dramatically evolved in countries around the world in terms of laws, policies, and programs. Now domestic violence interventions involve police, prosecutors, judges, parole officers, health care providers, social service providers, employers, the media, the clergy, traditional leaders, child protection services, schools, hotlines, shelters, advocacy organizations, and others. Interventions encompass criminal justice responses, civil remedies, victims’ services, and a wide range of prevention efforts, such as batterer treatment and various forms of community interventions. Yet empirical evidence of effectiveness of the various responses is uneven and sometimes contradictory, particularly in terms of preventing abuse or recidivism. In all countries, including Kyrgyzstan, greater efforts must be made to conduct research and evaluation on domestic violence interventions.

From what is known to date, interventions that involve a fully coordinated community response rooted in a strong law enforcement response are most promising. These typically use the full extent of the community’s legal and social systems to protect and empower victims, hold batterers accountable, and reinforce the community’s intolerance of domestic violence.

While the criminal justice system does not hold all the answers in terms of responding to domestic violence, it is a critical part of efforts to stop the abuse and hold offenders accountable. As the front line of the criminal justice system, police play a particularly important role in receiving and responding to domestic violence reports, making arrests, conducting investigations, referring cases for prosecution, and referring victims to services and protection measures.

But in Kyrgyzstan the police are failing in this role, and the government overall is failing to address the probem. In 2003 Kyrgyzstan adopted a progressive law to address the problem of domestic violence, a significant step toward preventing further violence and providing women with options to obtain safety and justice for violations of their rights. Unfortunately, law enforcement and government officials have failed to integrate this promising law into the everyday fulfillment of their duties.

As discussed below, officials remain unsympathetic to the problems of victims of domestic violence. The issue is of low priority for police and other government officials. Police do not view domestic violence as a law enforcement issue, and often blame women for the violence against them. Police do not effect orders of protection, one of the main innovations of the 2003 law, they discourage women from seeking investigations into domestic violence, and take other measures to ensure that perpetrators of domestic violence are not prosecuted. In the rare cases that are investigated, the lightest penalties are applied. Police and other local officials pressure women to reconcile with their abusers. As a result, women who are abused by their husbands are left with nowhere to turn for help to stop the violence, and no access to justice. They are expected to endure physical and sexual assault and other forms of abuse and the lasting injury and psychological trauma that result from it.

Women also encounter significant barriers to leaving violent marriages, including physical isolation, fear of retaliation, poverty, and social pressure not to divorce. Abused women who pursue divorce must observe waiting periods that put them at further risk of violence. They face difficulties asserting their rights to property, alimony, and custody of children.

Absence of empirical data on scope of domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan

As of this writing, there are no official government statistics regarding the scope of domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan. Experts who work with victims of domestic violence agree, however, that domestic violence is pervasive in Kyrgyzstan and that it affects women in every social stratum and in all regions of the country. After considerable pressure and grassroots lobbying from local women’s rights groups and criticism from authoritative international bodies, the government in 2002 recognized the need to gather and use statistics on specific forms of violence against women, including domestic violence, and a government plan was made to begin to collect and analyze such data: according to officials, the government committed to gathering statistics in a unified format from NGOs and government and law enforcement agencies.⁵³ Unfortunately, as of May 2006 this data was not yet available. Taalaygul Isakunova of the Presidential Council on Women, Family, and Gender Development told Human Rights Watch, “We do not have statistics on these issues; the government has not followed these things with such attention. We have some statistics on crimes, but not on the numbers of victims. Statistics track the criminals but not their victims; those statistics we have even on this are old.”⁵⁴

When Human Rights Watch asked several police officials for current statistics on reports regarding domestic violence, which law enforcement agencies are required to compile in accordance with the 2003 Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence (the domestic violence law), we were told such figures were unavailable.⁵⁵ An international expert on police reform offered a blunt explanation for this: “Complaints on domestic violence? Police don’t keep this statistic officially because it makes them look bad.”⁵⁶

Local experts who have closely tracked the problem for years say that domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan is on the rise. Isakunova said, “As an expert on these issues, I can say that the situation of violence against women is getting worse,”⁵⁷ and NGO activists, including one medical professional, shared the view that the prevalence of domestic violence in the country is increasing.⁵⁸

Attitudes about Domestic Violence

Attitudes about domestic violence described or expressed directly to Human Rights Watch indicated that some people interpret as “normal,” or blamed the victims for, behavior that in other contexts might be described as assault, battery, or worse. NGO activists and some government officials stated that government and law enforcement authorities generally believe that domestic violence is a “private matter” rather than a law enforcement matter. ⁵⁹ Some government and law enforcement officials blame women for violence done to them by their husbands. Others say that women provoke men to violence by failing to fulfill men’s expectations and displaying “excessive” independence. In response to a question from Human Rights Watch about steps the Kyrgyz government could take to stop domestic violence, one official offered: “Women should be more obedient and pay more attention to men and then domestic violence would decrease.”⁶⁰

These attitudes reinforce the dehumanization of women and the cycle of social acceptance of domestic violence. Girls in Kyrgyzstan are raised to accept domestic violence as “normal” and “acceptable,” and to put up with violence against them. Many witness violence against their own mothers at home. When they confront violence by their husbands as adults, women are told by relatives, community members, and government and law enforcement authorities that they should tolerate domestic violence.

One woman interviewed by Human Rights Watch talked about the response she had from her mother when she went to her for help with domestic violence by her husband. Keres K. said, “When I told my mother that he beat me, she told me that this is normal, everyone is beaten. My mother said, ‘What, you don’t think that your father beat me?’ Because of that I thought I had to just live with it. She said, ‘Put up with it.’ She said, ‘What if you leave and come home, what will our neighbors and relatives say?’”⁶¹ Reflecting on the effect that these messages had on her life and experience of further abuse at the hands of her husband, Keres K. said, “I put up with it and took it all on myself and for what? Now my health is ruined.”⁶²

Domestic violence and women’s rights a low priority for the government

There is near-universal acknowledgment that the Kyrgyz government ranks women’s rights a low priority. The attention of the government has centered on national security, fighting organized crime and corruption, and constitutional reform during President Bakiev’s first 18 months in power.

Taalaygul Isakunova from the Presidential Council on Women, Family, and Gender Development said bluntly, “Big politics take priority with the government now. Gender is not a priority. We have a declarative commitment, but not in action.”⁶³ She noted, however, that this was not unique to the Bakiev government, but a continuation of the policy of the previous government and years of neglect of women’s rights issues. She said the Presidential Council, for instance, has been impaired by the “systematic ignoring of women’s issues and development. The budget [for women’s programs] comes to about $10,000, for seminars etc. That is not much.”⁶⁴

When asked about how the government prioritizes domestic violence specifically, one senior government official said, “Society is not up to it yet. Not up for [discussing] violence against women. It is not a priority. To stop violence against women: We aren’t up to this.”⁶⁵ President Bakiev’s human rights advisor said that more action needs to be taken to raise awareness about domestic violence and stop the pattern of abuse. He said, “We need to teach our children to respect each other, to not use violence, to treat each other humanely… so we don’t leave children fatherless…. We need to use the mass media and roundtables and conferences and give authoritative people access to broadcast media.”⁶⁶

Views on Factors Contributing to Domestic Violence

There are a wide variety of views about the causes of domestic violence by husbands against their wives. However, the most commonly held views in Kyrgyzstan regarding the root causes of domestic violence have ramifications for the solutions that are developed by victims, activists, and government and law enforcement officials. Kyrgyz officials and members of civil society told Human Rights Watch that they felt the root causes are alcoholism, poverty, and the subordinate status of women in Kyrgyz households and society.

A number of experts on gender issues and activists who deliver direct services to women victims of violence see husbands’ violence against their wives as rooted in the subordination of women, and men’s compulsion to assert dominance at home. Women’s rights activist Bubusara Ryskulova stated, “Domestic violence is about control. It’s partly cultural—men think women need to stay in their ‘place.’”⁶⁷ A government human rights official said, “In traditional Kyrgyz families, men were always dominating women, so men expect women to be tolerant. The head of the family is always considered right.”⁶⁸ One of the official’s colleagues agreed, citing a proverb reinforcing male supremacy: “The head of the family is the man. There is this principle: Men have more rights in the family. ‘Right is the person who has more rights.’”⁶⁹

Shoira S., a young woman who witnessed abuse in her aunt and uncle’s home, told Human Rights Watch, “I live with my aunt. She is 33 years old…. She and her husband fight…. If she doesn’t listen, he will just beat her. This is widespread. The husband feels he has the right to beat his wife.”⁷⁰ She added, “There is this mentality here. Women must listen to husbands. Women must be subservient.”⁷¹ A government official echoed this assessment, saying, “When a woman starts to be independent, then that is the point at which men resort to violence. Men here often don’t accept women having their own point of view.”⁷²

The vast majority of NGO leaders and government officials in Kyrgyzstan interviewed by Human Rights Watch cited alcoholism and financial difficulties as causes of men’s violence toward their wives. As a result, many approaches to stopping domestic violence focus on helping men to overcome alcohol addiction or attain financial stability. There is a danger that those who emphasize these theories may fail to take into account other factors that contribute to domestic violence.

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asserted, “Economic reasons are a very important cause of domestic violence. We can do something about domestic violence by fighting poverty.”⁷³ An official from the Ombudsman’s office, charged with monitoring and advocating for citizens’ human rights, also cited increasing employment of men as the key to addressing domestic abuse. He said, “We need to give men more work, a higher salary, and then there won’t be any violence because they will have everything they dream of. All the woman cares about is that the children are dressed and go to school. If men earn the salary then everything is OK. In this way we can decrease instances of domestic violence, but not eliminate them.”⁷⁴ His colleagues concurred, with one laying the blame on women in the workforce: “If women have more money [than their husbands], then there are conflicts.”⁷⁵ Another said, “The government needs to give social support. If a family has all it needs, it could reduce domestic violence in the family.”⁷⁶

Women victims of domestic abuse by their husbands also point to alcoholism and economic concerns as being among the principal triggers of violence in the home. Mother-of-four Aida A., who had suffered multiple head traumas from beatings by her husband, said, “He beats me whenever he drinks and he drinks all the time.”⁷⁷ Farida F. said, “Every time he would get drunk he would go around and look for me to beat me up. He would beat me just for nothing. He would just approach me and hit me, without saying a word.”⁷⁸ Lydia L. recalled, “My husband would drink about two times per week and then would always beat me. He would get work for two or three days and then earn some money and then get drunk. He would come home so angry and then pound me.”⁷⁹ Elmira E. said, “I had a son and after that my husband started to beat me. He drank almost every day and beat me when he was drunk…. I remember one time that I accused him of not working and then he beat me. There were constant conflicts over money.”⁸⁰

The Experience of Domestic Violence

Beatings and psychological abuse

Human Rights Watch interviewed 25 women who experienced physical domestic violence. They described how their husbands and other family members often punched, kicked, or beat them with household objects. They also reported having suffered years of relentless psychological abuse by their husbands, resulting in emotional distress, fear, and often a loss of self-esteem. Many of these women said their husbands swore at them, shouted at them, and insulted them on a regular basis.

Farida F. told Human Rights Watch, “You have no idea what he did to me. He wouldn’t hit me with an object in his hands. He was such a strong man that he would hit me just with his bare hands. And he never paid any mind to the degree of physical force he applied during the beatings. He never cared when he would beat me up real bad either. He would just beat me with all his fury and strength.”⁸¹ Tursunai T. said her husband beat her every day for 15 years: “He beat me with his fists and kicked me with his boots on. I had bruises all the time…”⁸² Elmira E. recalled, “He would use dishes to beat [me and the kids]. He would use whatever ended up in his hands.”⁸³ Keres K., a mother of two children, said of her husband, “He threatens us with knives…. We are all afraid. He beat me with his fists and kicked me; I’ve had a number of concussions. When I cover my head to protect myself, my hands are covered with bruises.”⁸⁴

Some women are beaten by their husbands so often and for so many years that they begin to view this kind of violence as “normal.” Mirgul M., who continued to live with her husband at the time she spoke to Human Rights Watch, said, “He hits me with his fists or with anything at hand; with a teapot, cups… anything…One time I had a head wound and head trauma but I took care of it myself. I didn’t go to the hospital. I put creams on the wound…. A lot of times I had black eyes, but I don’t think of that as anything.”⁸⁵

Some women described feeling intense fear while living with their abusive spouses. Keres K., for example, described the anxiety she felt trying to anticipate her husband’s behavior, “After I leave work, I think, Will he be drunk or sober? What waits for me?”⁸⁶ Another woman said this anxiety was what finally led her to flee a violent home, “My husband beat me and I finally decided to leave when I realized that I feared him. I started fearing the moment when he would come home because he would start beating me.”⁸⁷ Mirgul M. echoed these feelings, saying, “I used to put up with it, but now I can’t stand it anymore…. [W]hen he comes home drunk, I shake. I can’t get a hold of myself.”⁸⁸

Several women described being beaten when they were pregnant. Gulzat G., age 20, said, “One day [my husband] came home and I was standing on a table painting a wall in the house. He said, ‘When are you going to get out of my life?’ And I didn’t answer and he hit me on the legs and pushed me. I fell off the table and fell to the ground. I started bleeding and I was very afraid that something had happened to my baby.”⁸⁹ Farida F., who was repeatedly beaten by her husband, said, “When my husband found out that I was pregnant, he changed his behavior a little bit. He became sort of quieter for some time. After a bit of a break he beat me up again when I was three months pregnant. After that he resumed his regular beatings of me.”⁹⁰ Farida F. also said her husband beat her after she gave birth, by cesarean section: “Once, two months after I left the hospital, he beat me up so bad that my nose started constantly bleeding. All my linen, my entire bed, was covered with blood.”

Dimira D. said that her husband came close to killing her and one of her children during one of his particularly violent bouts. She said, “At that time I was working at the market. My husband came and grabbed me and my child and took us home. He put a cord around my neck and threatened to strangle me. He dragged me into the house and poured gas on me and threatened to set the house on fire with me in it. My neighbors saw this and stopped him from going through with it.”⁹¹ Dimira D. also described some of the psychological abuse she was subjected to by her husband and his family. “My mother-in-law and husband always insult me. He always says that I am having affairs or I’m a prostitute, without any basis…. One time, before I was ill, my son and I sold kefir. We would go to the city and purchase it and then sell it. My husband beat me and accused me of having syphilis.”⁹²

A women’s rights activist in Jalal Abad recalled the story of a woman whose husband arranged for her to be gang raped. Zhanna Saralaeva said that the man had beaten and psychologically abused his wife for about 20 years. She said, “She told him to stop calling her a prostitute. He went out and bribed three men with alcohol and they went to his home and the three men raped the wife in front of the family.”⁹³ Saralaeva saw the woman following this incident. “She was covered in bruises and wounds,” she said.⁹⁴

Isolation and restricted movement

Abusive husbands restrict their wives’ movements in order to isolate and control them, which also prevents women from being able to escape an abusive home.⁹⁵ Several women’s rights activists say it is common for abusive husbands to prevent women even from leaving the house,⁹⁶ a scenario corroborated by one young woman interviewed by Human Rights Watch who had been kidnapped for forced marriage and then raped and beaten by her husband for more than a year. She told us that her husband, and his relatives who lived in the same household, kept her locked up and “never let me out of the house.”⁹⁷ One activist said that some women are locked up for years.⁹⁸

Abusive husbands also attempt to control women by monitoring their movements. Dinara D. told Human Rights Watch, “He locks up my clothes…. He controls me…. He always follows me.”⁹⁹ In other cases, abusers will cut off the telephone or lock women out of the room where it is located in order to limit their contact with others.¹⁰⁰

Deprivation of food

Abusive husbands also control women by controlling their access to basic necessities, including food. Deprivation of food was a common complaint of the women we interviewed. Several said that their husbands closely monitored the amount they and their children ate. Keres K., the mother of two children, said, “My husband accuses my son of eating too much; he doesn’t even let him eat. We’re all afraid to eat too much in front of him.”¹⁰¹ Another woman said of her husband, “He’s angry that the girls live there and eat ‘his’ food.”¹⁰²

The husband’s relatives, in particular his mother, often also control a wife’s access to food. Gulzat G. described how her mother-in-law deprived her and her baby of food: “She didn’t give me much food to eat. She would lock up the bread so I could only eat the portion that she allotted to me. She would refer to me and my daughter and say, ‘They eat too much and don’t bring any money to the family.’ My baby was always crying because she was hungry. My breast milk dried up because I wasn’t eating enough food.” She described her emotional despair over not being able to provide for her baby, “I even had this awful feeling one day when I came home and I just even thought I would want to kill my daughter because I saw how much she suffered because I could not feed her.”¹⁰³

Consequences of Domestic Violence

Physical abuse leading to serious injury

Abusive husbands cause their wives serious and, in some cases, lasting injury. Women reported that they suffered cuts, stab wounds, broken bones, difficulties during pregnancy and childbirth, loss of hearing, and other injuries as a result of physical assault by their husbands. The majority of women interviewed by Human Rights Watch had experienced multiple concussions as a result of blows to the head. Some women attempted to treat even these serious injuries themselves, but others sought professional medical treatment and were hospitalized.

Nurzat N. told us that she continued to suffer the after-effects of an incident during which her husband beat her on the head and body with a metal pipe, causing her a concussion and other injuries.¹⁰⁴ Other women also talked about the lasting damage done to them when their husbands beat them on the head. Asel A. said, “My second husband used to beat me on the head and my head would spin. My head still aches.”¹⁰⁵ Dimira D., who was married in 1991 and beaten throughout her marriage, said, “He beat me with a rock. He refused to let me go to the hospital, I had to go to a neighbor to get treatment. After being hit with the rock, I have problems with my hearing. Now he teases me that I’m deaf.”¹⁰⁶ Batia Tolobaeva, a doctor in Bishkek, commented on the frequency of head injuries among women victims of domestic violence: “Contusions and concussions are most common, they can even leave a woman disabled, and most live with headaches for the rest of their lives.”¹⁰⁷ A doctor in the south reported seeing women patients with similar problems.¹⁰⁸

Dr. Tolobaeva said, “Every day I see women victims of domestic violence. Out of seven women who come to the hospital on a given night, there are at least three women who’ve been beaten by their husbands.” She added that some women are hospitalized multiple times: “There are some women who come to us so often that the hospital is practically their home.”¹⁰⁹

Cholpon Ch., who was beaten for years by her husband, recalled a particularly brutal incident that led to her being hospitalized: “[H]e came in one time and was drunk. He asked me, ‘Why are you sitting doing nothing?’ I just sat silent and tried not to fight with him. He hit me in the head with a brick. I lost consciousness. I was at home for three days in bed. When I wasn’t getting any better I went to the [name of city withheld] hospital and for 12 days I was in the hospital there.… Three times he’s beaten me so badly that I lost consciousness. The most recent time was this year, on April 20 [2005]. He punched me in the face and I fell down. Then he kicked me in the mouth and in the back of the head. I spent 10 days in the [city] hospital.”¹¹⁰

Elmira E., who said her husband beat her frequently over a period of six years, described some of the injuries she sustained: “I was in intensive care for 10 days. My husband stabbed me with a knife in my back. In another instance, before that, he kicked me in the head and I had a concussion. I still have after-effects from this…. I ended up in the hospital two times, once for the stabbing in the shoulder and once for a concussion when he kicked me in the head. Now every year, once a year, I go to the hospital for treatment for the head trauma I suffered.”¹¹¹

Physical abuse causing death

In some cases, domestic violence can result directly in the wife’s death.

Uliana Aitbaeva, an activist from the northeastern town of Tiup (Issyk-Kul province), has followed closely incidents of women being killed by their husbands, ever since her own daughter was murdered. Aitbaeva’s daughter, Iskra Aldoiarova, was shot dead by her husband, Nurbek Estebesov, in July 2002. Age 25 at her death, Iskra had been beaten by her husband, a police officer, repeatedly during the years prior to the murder. After a prolonged legal battle, the husband was eventually convicted and imprisoned.¹¹² Aitbaeva also recounted that in 2003 a 65-year-old man in Tiup district who routinely beat his wife, a 14-year-old girl, one day allegedly beat her to death. The man was not convicted for the crime.¹¹³

Iskra Aldoiarova’s case and other cases of death from domestic violence, some resulting in criminal penalty for the perpetrator and others not, are further discussed below (see, “Prosecutions in cases of death”).

Psychological damage and emotional impact

Nearly all the women interviewed by Human Rights Watch told us that they experienced sleeplessness, chronic fatigue, flashbacks of the violence, impaired memory and concentration, wariness or hypervigilance (akin to feelings of paranoia), panic attacks, phobias about their daily routine, as well as emotional numbness, depression, shame, fear, and guilt.¹¹⁴ Women also reported to Human Rights Watch that they suffered humiliation, anxiety, loss of self-esteem, and despair. NGO activists confirmed also that women who came to them for help were often experiencing psychological distress.

Keres K., who had just days earlier fled her marriage after years of physical and psychological abuse by her husband, told Human Rights Watch about the toll that her experience and fear of further abuse was having on her: “I can’t sleep at night, I can’t watch TV, can’t read…. I’m very afraid. If anyone walks up to me, I’m afraid. For days I have not been able to sleep.” She described being gripped by anxiety when out in public, “I can’t get out of the depression now. When I’m riding in a minibus sometimes I have to get out and rest. When people yell on the bus or on the street or speak loudly, I’m filled with fear and feel bad.”¹¹⁵ Another woman who left her abusive husband after more than 10 years in a violent marriage said almost two years later, “I’m afraid that at any time he will come and find me and beat me. I can’t sleep at night.”¹¹⁶

A number of women interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed their feelings of exhaustion after years of abuse and said they were unable to withstand any more violence, and in some cases said they experienced suicidal thoughts following abuse by their husbands. Keres K. said she “didn’t even want to live” after her husband was released from a mandatory alcohol rehabilitation program. He came home and began beating her even more severely than he had before the treatment, and threatened to kill her. She said she also had violent fantasies: “When he sleeps, I think of killing him…”¹¹⁷ Elmira E., age 38, said, “The situation was so bad that I thought it would be better if he killed me.”¹¹⁸

At around the age of 20, Farida F. attempted suicide in an act of desperation to escape repeated beatings by her husband. She told Human Rights Watch:

It is even scary to remember now. He kept hitting my head and his blows were very strong. Then my patience ran thin. You know, when one is being beaten up all the time, day by day, then her patience finally ends one day, and if there is nobody to protect her, then this person starts thinking of the most horrible things for protection… I couldn’t handle it any more and I grabbed a knife. I didn’t see any other way out. I couldn’t stop him. I used to tell him all the time: “Do not touch me, please do not hit me.”… I begged him not to touch me, but nothing could stop him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even run out on the street because the door was locked. Besides, he wouldn’t let me run out. So, I had to grab a knife and I wanted to cut my veins…. At that point he [had been] beating me for half an hour. He was hitting me not just on my head, but also on my chest, my hands and legs. I felt like my bones were cracking, I was afraid that he had already broken some of my bones. For instance, my legs went numb. I didn’t even feel any pain any more. It was very painful at first, but as he kept hitting me aiming at the very same spot, it became numb and I didn’t feel the pain. It felt like my legs turned into a piece of wood. I did it to stop the beating somehow. I thought that if I didn’t stop him, my entire body would just give up. Or that he would finally strike me so bad, I would become an invalid or that he even could kill me right there. That was the situation. As for the knife, I didn’t even think about it. It all happened suddenly, like I was in some kind of shock. I don’t even remember how I grabbed the knife. When I grabbed the knife I wanted to cut myself here [shows the place], and I missed. Instead, I cut myself here [shows the place]. So, I cut myself twice before he managed to grab me. Here, at this spot on my body, everything opened up and in the very same place I did manage to cut a vein. I started bleeding.¹¹⁹

Effect of domestic violence on children

Children who witness domestic violence perpetrated against their mothers also show signs of trauma, and can experience serious psychological problems. Some of the women we interviewed told us that their children complain of headaches and sleeplessness and experience depression and anxiety. They worry about their mothers and fear their fathers. Some women said their children would scream or try to intervene to stop the beatings.¹²⁰ Nurzat N. said, “My daughter saw all of our fights, the scandal. She’s now sick. She’s very weak and she often has headaches. She comes home from school… she’ll go run around a bit and then complain of headaches.”¹²¹ Keres K. told us, “My daughter cries at night, saying ‘don’t hurt my mama.’ She needs a psychologist.” ¹²²

A medical doctor told Human Rights Watch about a case in which a man hit his wife over the head with an axe, spliting her head open. The children who witnessed the incident included the couple’s three-year-old daughter, who went into shock afterwards and stopped speaking. The woman died of her injuries.¹²³

Farida F. described the trauma her son suffered when, at one-and-a-half years old, he witnessed his father beating her so badly he broke one of her ribs and caused her to fall down. She said, “After this incident my baby became really afraid of his own father. My son has been so afraid, that even when I just simply lift my hands above my head, he becomes hysterical. He has been suffering from bed-wetting. Doctors told me that he keeps wetting his bed because of the neurological stress.”¹²⁴

Concern for the psychological and emotional well-being of children has led some government officials to look more favorably on divorce than they might have otherwise and to abandon talk of reconciliation to “save the family.” One official from the Presidential Council on Women, Family, and Gender Development said, “Regarding saving the family versus pursuing divorce, you have to look at each case. Many times it really seems better that they divorce, especially often for the children, to save them the trauma of witnessing such violence and to prevent the sons from repeating the same patterns later.”¹²⁵

A number of women reported that their children were also beaten by their husbands during bouts of violence. Keres K. said her husband beat their children and threatened the life of their 17-year-old daughter by attempting to throw the girl off the balcony of their house.¹²⁶ Women reported that children were particularly vulnerable to violence when they tried to protect their mothers from abuse. Salima S., for example, said of her husband, “He fights with my son, who tries to protect me.”¹²⁷ Nurzat N. down-played the harm to her 11-year-old daughter, who was beaten when she tried to protect her mother, saying, “He usually didn’t touch her when we fought. He never beat her that badly. He would push her, but he wouldn’t beat her badly. When he pushed her, she would fall. But he never beat her badly. He would yell at her, get angry with her. My daughter tried to defend me from my husband. She would cry.”¹²⁸

Other women say that they were beaten when they tried to protect their children from abuse. Elmira E., for example, said, “My husband also beat our children. Sometimes I would try to defend them against him. I thought it was better that he beat me than them….”¹²⁹

Redress

Women victims of domestic violence face significant obstacles to assistance and to obtaining justice. When women seek help to stop domestic violence, obtain protection from further abuse, and punish the perpetrators, law enforcement officers and other officials often treat the women with scorn, side with their abusers, facilitate men’s retaliation against their wives, and fail to prosecute men for the crimes they have committed. Police and other government officials—as well as aksakals, or community elders—also pressure women to reconcile with their violent husbands.

The laws on domestic violence

Kyrgyzstan has one of the most progressive laws on domestic violence in the region. In 2003 the government adopted the Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence, the result of years of lobbying by local women’s rights groups, which contributed significantly to drafting the law. Domestic violence is defined under the law as “any intentional act by one family member directed towards another family member if such act limits [the] victim’s legal rights and freedoms, inflicts physical or mental suffering and causes moral harm; or contains a threat to the physical or mental development of a minor member of the family.”¹³⁰

This law represents a significant step forward in the potential protection of women from violence by their husbands. While various aspects of the law will be discussed below, of particular significance is its provision on orders of protection. An order of protection is defined in the 2003 law as “a legal document granting a victim of domestic violence protection by the state. It contains a warning to the individual who committed or attempted to commit an act of domestic violence by the means described in this Law.”¹³¹

The law envisions two types of protection orders: temporary restraining orders issued by law enforcement agencies, and protective court orders. According to the law, a temporary restraining order can be issued by a law enforcement official from the moment a woman files a complaint about domestic violence. The order entitles a woman to police protection to ensure that her abuser does not harm her during the term of the order—up to 15 days. A temporary restraining order may specify that the accused abuser is to avoid direct or indirect contact with the victim, and it may also regulate access to dependent minors. In issuing the order, police also assume the obligation to investigate a woman’s complaint and to monitor the behavior of her husband, to ensure that he is not violating the terms of the restraining order and has not hurt her again. Judges also are authorized to issue protection orders, in their case for terms of one to six months. As of this writing, however, implementing mechanisms were lacking for this element of the law and it had consequently rarely been put into practice.¹³²

The Administrative Code of the Kyrgyz Republic provides a penalty for violation of a protection order of five to 15 times the “calculation indices [a fixed monetary value set by parliament]”¹³³ or 10 days’ administrative arrest, and a fine of 10 to 20 times the calculation indices or 10 to 15 days’ administrative arrest if the protection order was issued by a court.¹³⁴

Therefore, the sanctions that flow from the Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence are primarily administrative not cr iminal sanctions. Kyrgyz criminal law does not make specific reference to spousal violence. The Kyrgyz justice system deals with domestic violence through penalties for crimes involving the infliction of suffering through violence that are provided in the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic and the Administrative Code.¹³⁵ Criminal Code article 111 sets out punishment of up to three years in prison for “inflicting physical or psychological suffering through systematic beatings or through other violent means.” Aggravating circumstances that carry a heavier penalty—up to seven years in prison—include committing such violence against a “person who is materially or otherwise dependent upon the perpetrator, as well as against a person who had been abducted or taken hostage.”

Criminal Code article 112 assigns lighter penalties for “[p]urposeful infliction of light damage to health having resulted in a short-term health disorder or in a minor permanent loss of the ability to work.” The perpetrator of such violence stands to be punished with up to six months’ arrest or up to one year in prison. However, if the violence is deemed not to have caused a health disorder or loss of ability to work, then authorities can levy a fine of up to 30 times the minimum monthly wage, or place the perpetrator under arrest for up to three months.

Threatening to murder someone carries a penalty of arrest for up to six months or two years in prison, in accordance with article 113 of the Criminal Code. Criminal Code article 129, outlawing rape, prescribes imprisonment of five to eight years for “regular rape,” and from eight to 25 years for acts of rape committed under aggravating circumstances, and provides the death penalty as the maximum punishment in cases of rape of a minor (a child under age 14) that entails particularly serious consequences for the victim.

While marital rape is not specifically mentioned as a criminal offense under article 129, the 2003 law on domestic violence lists sexual domestic violence as a type of abuse forbidden under the law. Sexual domestic violence is defined in the 2003 law as “an act by one family member that infringes the sexual inviolability of another family member; as well as acts of a sexual character involving a minor.”¹³⁶

The Kyrgyz Administrative Code contains an article specifically about domestic violence, though it does not specify spousal abuse. Article 66-3 states that administrative penalty is to be applied against the perpetrator of domestic violence, including physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, when that abuse does not justify criminal proceedings. It states that in cases where the action of one family member against another violates the person’s constitutional or other rights, results in light damage to a person’s health, causes physical or psychological suffering, or damages a person’s physical or psychological development—regardless of age or sex—and that action does not qualify for criminal liability, an administrative fine should be levied against the perpetrator of five to 10 times the calculated indices.

According to people who spoke with Human Rights Watch, when the authorities punished violent husbands at all, they did so most frequently by applying short detention periods and fines. Human Rights Watch was unable to ascertain, however, whether these sanctions were applied under the Criminal or Administrative Code.

Law not enforced

Close observers of the problem of domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan say the Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence and the Criminal Code are not implemented and therefore do not function to punish domestic violence. “The laws are good, but they aren’t functioning,” commented Aleksandra Eliferenko, head of the women’s NGO Chance, in Bishkek.¹³⁷ In 2004 the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women expressed concern that despite the 2003 domestic violence law, domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan remained “hidden” and the police response to victims’ reports was “inadequate.”¹³⁸

In particular, observers point to a lack of implementation of the provisions in the Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence, such as orders of protection. A lawyer with Chance in Bishkek commented, “It is most important that the government carries out the law. If a person commits a crime, he should be punished. [But] they enact a law, and put it onthe shelf.”¹³⁹ When asked about this disconnect between the law and practice, a government official conceded there was much to be done. She stated, “We need to continue to work on legal protections and we have to ensure mechanisms to carry it out, we need internal instructions in the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] and elsewhere.”¹⁴⁰

In its 2003-2004 report entitled “Domestic Violence in Kyrgyzstan: Causes, Scale, Effectiveness of Actions,” the group El Pikir (Public Opinion), a public opinion research center, found that the absence of guidelines for implementing the Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence was one of the main explanations for its ineffectiveness thus far. While there are no strict legal obstacles to implementing the law, the report charges that “at present the law has [only] a declarative character” and that “most of its articles are not practically applicable.” The group pointed specifically to the failure to amend other corresponding laws, such as the criminal and civil procedure codes, to incorporate the new provision on protection orders issued by courts. The report indicated other practical obstacles as well, such as the fact that the protection order forms had not been drafted and distributed so authorities could issue the orders, and that instructions on how protection orders are to be used have yet to be developed.¹⁴¹ The concerns in the El Pikir findings remained relevant at the time of Human Rights Watch’s research for this report.

Those responsible for executing the law exhibit little interest in familiarizing themselves with it so long as the government fails to issue implementing guidelines. One court expert said, “I know that such a law was adopted. But why should I study it?…[W]hen they will develop instructions on its application, give it to me for execution, then I will study it.”¹⁴²

The non-application of protection orders is explored further in the sub-section below, “Police failure to register and investigate complaints and issue protection orders.”

Reasons why women do not turn to the police

While as of this writing no statistics were available to Human Rights Watch on the number of domestic violence complaints filed by women in Kyrgyzstan, experts we interviewed said the numbers were low and attributed this to several factors. First, people in Kyrgyzstan are generally reluctant to turn to police for help or to report a crime. Studies, including a survey by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2004, reveal that sizeable numbers of people view police with suspicion and have little faith that they will be fair or that it is worthwhile to turn to them for help.¹⁴³ In 2005 the OSCE pointed out the need to build public trust in the police, perceived by some as “a corrupt and undemocratic institution that protects only the interests of the state authority.”¹⁴⁴ OSCE experts on Kyrgyzstan’s law enforcement agencies say there continues to be widespread disapproval of police.¹⁴⁵

Second, many women victims of domestic violence do not turn to the police to register a complaint or issue a restraining order. Few have faith that, if called upon, police will act on their behalf.¹⁴⁶ “I never went to the police, it’s pointless,” said Aida A., grandmother of two, who has lived in a violent marriage for 25 years and has been hospitalized for head trauma due to beatings by her husband.¹⁴⁷ Elmira E., whose parents were unsupportive when she left a violent marriage that had begun with her abduction, said, “I didn’t go to the police or anywhere for help. I just thought no one would help me.”¹⁴⁸

Third, some women fear that their abusive spouses will retaliate against them with further violence if they go to the police. Keres K., who suffered years of abuse in a violent marriage, said that past experiences with police failure to protect her had left her fearful. She said that once her husband had come home in a rage after being briefly detained by police (for assaulting her) and threatened to kill her. After she fled her husband, Keres K. said she would pursue a divorce but would not file a criminal case. “I’m afraid to go to the police about the threats on my life, because after he was arrested last time, he beat me so badly,” she said.¹⁴⁹ Another woman, who was beaten repeatedly by her husband of 30 years, explained why she would not consider going to the police: “Even if the police did come to [a woman’s] defense, the husband would punish his wife [for having called them].”¹⁵⁰

Fourth, women may fear being stigmatized by their community for turning to law enforcement authorities. One lawyer for a women’s rights group told Human Rights Watch, “[W]omen don’t go to the police… because they consider it shameful… It brings shame on the family.”¹⁵¹ Another attorney who works with women victims of violence explained that women are denounced as “home-wreckers” if they turn to the police for help. He said, “There’s this mentality, if a woman has written a petition then she’s trying to destroy her family, undermine her husband.”¹⁵²

Finally, after they leave violent marriages, some women find the prospect of pursuing a criminal case against their husbands daunting and too emotionally painful, and see themselves as facing a choice between pursuing legal action or being allowed by their former abuser to live in peace. Nurzat N. explained that she did not go to the police after leaving her abusive husband because she did not want to be re-traumatized: “I didn’t go to the police. I didn’t go to anyone. You know, I didn’t want this to start again. I just want him to leave me alone. I don’t want to face him again at some police station. I just want to live.”¹⁵³

Police failure to act to stop domestic violence

Article 10 of the 2003 domestic violence law specifies measures police must take in response to domestic violence. If implemented, these would be effective in protecting women from abuse and in leading to the prosecution of their abusers. They include:

accept and register each domestic violence report; ensure appearance of their representative to the place of family conflict; interview both parties; give necessary counseling to the victim of domestic violence; explain the logistics of filing for a protective order; or explain the procedure of calling an assailant to account for civil or criminal liability; in case of necessity provide a victim of domestic violence with transportation to healthcare facility, safe place or a social services institution; take measures in preventing domestic violence; take all means necessary to charge an assailant; prepare documents necessary for a temporary restraining order, as well as all necessary court documents; collaborate with local social service institutions working with unsuccessful families.¹⁵⁴

Article 19 of the law states: “Upon receiving oral or written information about domestic violence, law enforcement agencies or a local prosecutor’s office must take immediate measures directed to the prevention of domestic violence.”¹⁵⁵

However, police consistently fail to fulfill the responsibilities that are so clearly spelled out in this law. As detailed below, in those cases when women do come forward, police often do not register their complaints, issue protection orders, or seriously investigate the case with a view to prosecution. Instead, they often encourage women to reconcile with their abusers. Women’s lack of confidence that police will act to stop domestic violence, mentioned above, is well-founded.

Police attitudes

Underpinning police inaction on domestic violence are attitudes indicating that they do not take domestic violence seriously. Often police do not view violence by men against their wives as a law enforcement issue, and many view family arguments that involve violence as normal and a private matter.^{^¹⁵⁶} NGOs that work with victims of domestic abuse told Human Rights Watch that police routinely side with male abusers in cases of domestic violence: women who turn to the police to register a complaint and obtain a protection order find police often blame them for causing domestic violence. An ombudsman’s office official commented that many neighborhood police officers “don’t try to settle the problem, but try to cover for the person who committed the abuse.”¹⁵⁷ A rights defender recalled, “A husband in our communal courtyard [dvor] came home drunk and got into a fight with his wife and hit her, and his nine-year-old son stood up for the mother and both the son and mother ended up in the hospital. The neighborhood police officer did nothing, they see it as just normal.”¹⁵⁸

Some officers, including senior police officials, also hold women responsible for bringing about the law enforcement consequences of male abuse—stating, for instance, that they are opposed to women “sending their husbands to jail” for domestic violence and therefore breaking up the family.¹⁵⁹ Interviews with NGO staff, victims of domestic violence, and several police officers indicated that police see the women’s complaint, not the men’s violent behavior, as the “reason” men are at risk of prosecution and imprisonment, and they often seek to prevent this outcome. In fact, few men are successfully prosecuted or go to prison for acts of domestic violence against their wives. One senior officer we interviewed was left at a loss for words when asked about convictions of men for domestic violence, but said, “Sentencing of husbands is very rare. It happens maybe only once per year.” ¹⁶⁰ Perhaps unsurprisingly, the same officer noted that there had not been a single conviction of a man for domestic violence during his nine months on the job, “Since I’ve been here, since March, we haven’t had a single case of a husband convicted.”¹⁶¹ NGO statistics confirm the trend: the lawyer for one women’s crisis group said that in the four years he had been working with women victims of domestic violence, since 2002, he had only seen “seven or eight cases in which a husband was sentenced.”¹⁶²

Police often cast their failure to hold men accountable for their crimes as a “favor” to the women who are being abused. One senior law enforcement officer said, “You can turn a man into a criminal quickly, try him and put him in jail and that’s it for him and the family. Then they get divorced. So we try to deal with this in the community. We do prevention work with the husband so as not to break up the family. Above all we try to save the family…. If a woman complains, then we can arrest her husband, convict him, and then put him in prison. It’s very easy to make a criminal out of him. But if a woman is left without work and without income, then how can she raise the children? This is what happens if there are criminal cases. We try not to let it get to that point.”¹⁶³ A procuracy¹⁶⁴ official echoed this: “If you put the man in jail, who will feed the children?”¹⁶⁵

Law enforcement officers encourage women to reconcile with their abusers and down-play the cost to her of the ongoing violence that she will therefore be consigned to endure. These officials see it as the job of the local neighborhood police officer to facilitate a woman’s remaining in or returning to an abusive home. One procuracy official, for example, told Human Rights Watch, “If she has children… In these cases it may be better for the police to reconcile the man and woman. The neighborhood police officer sometimes reconciles the man and woman. A good officer will do this. Maybe the husband just came home in a bad mood and his wife hadn’t cooked dinner, and they had a fight.”¹⁶⁶ “It’s not good for there to be a lot of divorces,” said another senior law enforcement officer during a discussion about protection orders and options for ensuring women’s safety.¹⁶⁷ Also, as described below, police sometimes facilitate the return of a woman to an abusive home out of solidarity with, or in exchange for payment by, the husband.

Even when officers recognize that domestic violence is a crime, they give it low priority as compared to responding to other crimes. An attorney who works with women victims of domestic abuse summed up the situation: “If a woman calls about beatings, the police often don’t come, because there are so many such cases and by the time they get there the conflict is often over. They don’t want to waste the time or gas [responding to such calls].” The attitude of police to domestic violence cases, she said, is often simply “why bother?”¹⁶⁸ Police who reach a home where violence has been reported but is no longer in progress may consider the conflict to be “over” and the work of the police to be no longer necessary. They may also believe the woman will withdraw the complaint and view the effort expended as wasted. Officers generally do not see it as their role to ensure that men are brought to justice for the beating that has taken place, nor do they see it as important to ensure that the men in such cases do not harm their wives again.

Other experts state that in addition to police perception that it is not their responsibility to respond to domestic violence, entrenched problems such as corruption and incompetence also are reasons for police indifference.¹⁶⁹

Police failure to register and investigate complaints and issue protection orders

Bubusara Ryskulova, a long-time activist who works with women victims of violence, said, “If a woman goes [to the station] on her own, the police don’t always register it.”¹⁷⁰ An official from the government’s Office of the Ombudsman said, “Many women come to us with cases of physical and psychological abuse by their husbands. Many say that the police refuse to take their complaints and say it’s just a family matter.”¹⁷¹ Some point to officers’ bias in favor of reconciliation of the couple, regardless of the violent nature of the marriage, as part of the explanation for this.¹⁷² Another women’s rights expert pointed out that police use threats to prevent women from filing complaints, “Police don’t register complaints, [they] try to dissuade women [from filing complaints]. They say: ‘We’ll put him in jail for three days and then let him go and it will be worse for you.’ They scare women into not complaining.”¹⁷³

Farida F., who was subjected to repeated brutal beatings by her husband, turned to the police after her husband beat her at a busstop one day in front of other people. She said when none of the eyewitnesses helped her, she decided to go to the police. Convincing officers to register her complaint was extremely difficult, she recalls: “You know in cases like mine, our police do not accept complaints. They consider such things as just a family affair, which is truly terrible. So, in order for my complaint to be accepted by the police I had to behave in the most inappropriate way. And it was the only way for me, because I came there for help and they refused to help me. I became hysterical and made a scene asking them: ‘Then who would help me but you?!’ I had to cry and yell at them. Only then they realized that I was truly in trouble.”¹⁷⁴

In addition to preventing women from seeking justice in cases of abuse, police also fail to take positive action to protect women from further violence. Accounts by victims of domestic violence and NGOs that provide services to them, as well as by several police officials, indicate that they do not issue orders of protection, or temporary restraining orders designed to help women in just such situations. Farida F. said,

Although the police did accept my complaint, they failed to undertake any meaningful measures…. After my husband came over to my apartment and threatened to hurt me, I wrote my second complaint to the police. When I came to the police station I had to raise my voice again. I demanded that they undertake measures against my husband, I asked them to respect my rights, including my right to live without constant fear of being hurt. But they tried to refuse to accept the complaint again. So, I had to raise my voice…. They told me that supposedly they spoke to my husband concerning my complaint. That was all they did or at least they told me that they did. When I came over to file my complaint, the police told me: “Lady, this is your family business. We do not have the laws to deal with these situations.”¹⁷⁵

As one NGO leader told Human Rights Watch, “We tell women to go to the police to get restraining orders, and then the police say ‘What restraining order? I’ve never heard of it.’”¹⁷⁶ Law enforcement officials say a lack of knowledge about the mechanism among police is to blame for the low number of protection orders issued. A procuracy official from one province told Human Rights Watch that his office had noticed that a district police station in the province had failed to issue even a single protection order since the law went into effect. He said that there had been complaints of domestic abuse registered at that station, but no protection orders issued. When his office investigated, he said, it found that the police did not know about the mechanism. “At this time there are very few protection orders issued,” he said, “The police don’t know about it and the investigators don’t know about it.”¹⁷⁷

Even with a protection order in place, the police may take no further action. This inaction can be devastating to a woman who has received an order of protection and is counting on the police to protect her from further abuse. For example, police had issued a protection order for Dimira D., but she continued to suffer brutal attacks by her husband. She said, “The police warned my husband not to harass me, but the restraining order didn’t really function.”¹⁷⁸

One action some police resort to is to put men who beat their wives on the uchet, or police registry. One police official said that thousands of people were on this preventative list in his area for a variety of reasons. If a man has had complaints lodged against him and is put on the list, he is monitored: “This means that the neighborhood police officer knows the man is on the list and will investigate how things are with him. He’ll talk with the neighbors and his wife and the aksakals and maybe also with the man and will warn him that he’s on the list.” However the official also noted, “It’s not hard to get off and on the list.”¹⁷⁹

Failure to prosecute

Investigations halted when women are pressured

As noted above, many police justify their failure to take meaningful steps to investigate domestic violence complaints by blaming women for withdrawing their statements. As one activist put it, “Police do know that domestic violence is a problem, but they don’t work very hard at it. They know that very often women will write a petition but then refuse to go through with the case.”¹⁸⁰

There are many reasons why a domestic violence victim might not want a prosecution to go forward. She may no longer see prosecution as necessary if the arrest put a stop (at least temporarily) to the abuse. She may fear that the costs of prosecution, such as violent retaliation, outweigh the benefits. She might not see prosecution as an effective remedy, for example if she believes the violence results from a substance abuse or emotional problem for which treatment or counseling might be effective. She may fear financial repercussions for the family if the abuser goes to jail or has to pay a fine. She may feel otherwise dependent on the abuser and afraid of his long-term absence, particularly if the abuser has isolated the victim and cut her off from social support systems. Or she may just want to move on with her life, and not have to confront her abuser in court.

Police view it as normal and even rational for an abusive husband to intimidate his wife to drop the charges against him. As one official from the prosecutor’s office put it, “There are often such instances: the police start to investigate and want to conduct a full criminal investigation. The wife comes and decides that she wants to withdraw her petition. Her husband often pressures her to do this. The wife will go back to him because she’s thinking: ‘who’s going to raise the children,’ since the woman is likely not working.”¹⁸¹

Nurzat N. told her own story of being convinced by her husband and his family not to bring charges, despite the serious injury that her husband had caused her. She described the beating that landed her in the hospital with a concussion in 1997 or 1998: “He beat me. He said, ‘You came home late.’ He beat me really badly…. He had something metal in his hands, it was a pipe, but not too thick. He beat me all over my body and my head. He then beat me with his fists. But I lost consciousness while he was beating me.” She later called her parents and they took her to the hospital. She said, “While I was in the hospital, the police came and talked to me and asked me to write a complaint. But then my husband’s mother and grandmother came and pressured me not to write it. I felt sorry for them, so I didn’t write it. They cried and they begged me not to write it…. I was in the hospital for two weeks and then for one month after that I also underwent treatment. While I was in the hospital my husband came, took care of me, asked that I not write a complaint to the police…. I regret it now. I should have written the complaint then and handed him over to the police.”¹⁸²

Even considering the many reasons why a woman may fear going forward with a prosecution, this is not a reason to presume domestic violence victims will not cooperate with a prosecution. Instead, police and prosecutors should fulfill their duties in ways designed to ensure not just accountability for the abuse, but also empowerment for the victim. This would include avoiding blaming the victim for the violence, giving her information about the court process and her role as a witness, referring her to social services, informing her about civil remedies like protection orders, and involving her in decisions about her case.

The present reality, however, is that police are at times party to the pressure on women to withdraw complaints. One senior government official said, “The police don’t block a woman [from getting an official medical exam], but they might try to close the case before it goes higher; they might try to resolve the situation or ask her, ‘Why do you need such shame?’ and try to convince her to drop the case.”¹⁸³

Corruption

Women’s rights advocates and government officials told Human Rights Watch that police corruption is an impediment to investigations and prosecutions. One former police officer now working as a government official with responsibility for human rights monitoring said, “[In cases of domestic violence], the man just pays money to the local police officer to get the matter closed. People pay different amounts, about 500 som [about $12] and up.”¹⁸⁴

President Bakiev’s advisor on human rights confirmed that he too was aware of the problem of police corruption as an obstacle to justice in such cases. Speaking of complaints about domestic violence that have come to his office, he said, “Lots of people come to me after having gone to the police or the procuracy and failed to receive results. Often the husband or his relatives give money, give bribes, so that the police and procuracy don’t review cases.”¹⁸⁵ OSCE law enforcement experts said there is often an “agreement” between police officers and abusive men, in which the officers accept bribes to close a case.¹⁸⁶

One doctor who works at a hospital that has a full-time police duty officer (not all do), said that much police corruption is right out in the open. She said, “If a woman gives a statement to the police in the hospital, the man may be right there and can pay the officer off right there and the statement is torn up and that’s that.”¹⁸⁷

Women’s own stories describe how police corruption works to frustrate their access to justice. One woman who had left her husband described what happened when she was again beaten by him and went to the police. Chinara Ch. hired a driver and returned home to retrieve her clothes. Her husband beat her and broke the driver’s car window. He was forced to pay the driver compensation for the broken window, but he was not punished for beating his wife. According to Chinara Ch., her husband bribed the local police to side with him and they blamed the incident on her.¹⁸⁸ She said, “I went to the police; to the colonel. The neighborhood officer said he would not go to the house, that it was my own fault. The neighborhood officer was given two bags of potatoes by my husband, after I wrote the complaint—so that the officer would open a case against me instead. Then the police decided it was my fault and refused to open a [criminal] case.”¹⁸⁹

When women try to flee to safety, police sometimes return women to abusive households in exchange for payment. Dinara D., who had been physically and psychologically abused by her husband, said that police accepted a bribe in exchange for forcing her to return home when she tried to leave. She said, “I’ve tried to run away 26 times. He gives the neighborhood police officer money and the police find me and take me back home. They scare me and say that they will put me in jail for two or three years if I don’t go back…. My husband told the local police officer that I had stolen money from him and that’s what the officer threatened to charge me with.”¹⁹⁰

Even when a woman is seriously injured by her husband and it is clear that he has hurt her repeatedly and may continue to do so, police have sided with the man in exchange for money. One woman said that a relative of hers had separated from her husband and was unable to get police to act on her reports of ongoing violence by him. The relative said, “She wrote lots of complaints to the police, but each time her husband would just bribe the policeman. Her husband would come to her house and beat her. He broke her ribs four times and gave her a concussion five times.”¹⁹¹

Administrative penalties and light penalties instead of prosecutions

When women are successful in getting their husbands investigated for abuse, they still may not see justice done. Instead of passing on to the procuracy and the courts domestic violence cases that warrant criminal prosecution, police instead pursue administrative fines or three- to 15-day periods of detention, usually under the Administrative Code.

As noted above, the law prescribes fines as a penalty only for violence that is properly categorized as “purposeful infliction of light damage to health” that does not result in even “a short-term health disorder” or “minor permanent loss of the ability to work.” Article 66-3 of the Administrative Code envisions a fine as the proper penalty for domestic violence only when the degree of damage to the victim could not justify criminal liability. It is the lightest of all possible penalties for acts of domestic violence.¹⁹² In the cases researched by Human Rights Watch, it was unclear whether the fines and brief detention periods were assigned by police or an administrative court. In some cases involving brief detention periods it was unclear whether the sanction was applied under the Criminal or Administrative Code. Our research suggested that police did not forward cases for criminal prosecution because they had a biased assessment of what constitutes “serious injury” to a woman.

Rights defender and Bishkek doctor Batia Tolobaeva recalled a case in which police

assigned a man three days of detention after his threats and abuse caused his wife to be hospitalized and apparently drove her to suicide. Tolobaeva said, “One year ago, a woman… was beaten and taken to the hospital. The husband left her, but would come back periodically and beat her. She wrote a complaint to the police, but after that he came even more often. He came every day and threatened her saying, ‘I’ll kill you.’ And she really believed this. She believed she had no way out. So she prepared herself for death. She saved some money and left a note for her 14-year-old daughter. She got dressed, put on makeup, and then jumped from the fourth floor and killed herself. The police detained him for only three days.”¹⁹³

An elderly woman, Nadira N., who said she was seriously injured by a man living with her—he had suffocated her and tried to kill her—said, “I went to the police several times. They detained him for 15 days and then beat him and then let him go.”¹⁹⁴ Jamila J. said her ex-husband stalked her and continued to assault her after their divorce. He would break into her house, hit her, yank her by the hair, threaten her with a knife and threaten to kill her. She went to the police to ask them to help put a stop to the violence. She said, “I demanded that they do something urgently. They detained him, but held him for only three days and then released him.”¹⁹⁵ Following the police failure to act, Jamila J.’s ex-husband attacked her again and she eventually resorted to using violence to defend herself.¹⁹⁶

One expert on women’s rights, Nurgul Asylbekova of Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan, asserted that in instances of “lighter injuries,” such as broken bones, the lightest possible sanction is often applied. “The only exceptions are when a woman is killed or there are very serious physical injuries. If a woman gets a broken arm or ribs, the police just give the man three days of detention, then he gets out and beats her again.”¹⁹⁷ A procuracy official acknowledged the phenomenon to some extent, but presented a deliberately minimal hypothetical example to justify the resort to lighter penalties through the administrative, rather than criminal, justice system. He told Human Rights Watch, “The sentence for domestic violence depends on the seriousness of the physical injury. If she has a black eye, they won’t give him 10 years, you know.”¹⁹⁸

Consequences of police failure to act

While police intervention is no guarantee that violence will stop, when police fail to act they deprive women of any possibility for protection and justice. As a result, the abuse can continue, sometimes for decades, and in some cases the violence can escalate over time. In these cases, the increased frequency or brutality of the violence leads to serious injury to women, and sometimes to a woman’s death.

Local rights groups also point out that when police fail to respond to domestic violence, women sometimes take action, including violent action, in self-defense. Jamila J. described the consequences of the accumulated failure of local police to protect her. Unsuccessful in her attempts to convince the police to protect her from repeated assault by her ex-husband, which resulted in a concussion and other injuries, she eventually resorted to violence to defend herself in May 2004:

He came one day to our house, he was very drunk. He broke down the door to get in. That time he attacked me and hit me with his fists and I suffered a concussion. I went to the police and asked them to take action. But they didn’t do anything in time. He then came back at 2 a.m. He came with a metal pipe in his hand, he was drunk and high…. I feared for myself and my children and could only think that I had to defend them. He started to come into the house and I came out and met him. He tried to hit me. I knocked him down. The next thing I know I had the pipe in my hands and I had been hitting him. He had two broken legs. Then my [current] husband came out and pulled me off of my ex-husband. I was in shock…. The case against me was investigated for four months and then the court process went [on] for four months. They sent me to the psychological hospital to determine my sanity at the time of the attack. They determined that at the moment of the attack I was changed, that I was consumed by stress and fear and did not understand what I was doing. They gave me a one-year suspended sentence that expires in December. I have to go to the police once a month to check in.

The incident finally sparked police and judicial action to address her ex-husband’s violent behavior; a former convict, he was sent to prison on an eight-year sentence for beating her.¹⁹⁹ But even after her husband was sent to prison, Jamila J. was skeptical that the police would protect her, “My ex-husband is in prison now, but I still fear him. I fear what he will do when he gets out. The police clearly can’t protect me.”²⁰⁰

Prosecutions in cases of death

When a woman is killed by her husband, there is a greater chance that the man will be successfully prosecuted.²⁰¹ Even so, there are cases where it appears that investigation and prosecution were not diligently pursued. In the case of Iskra Aldoiarova, the daughter of women’s rights activist Uliana Aitbaeva, police initially took the position that she was responsible for her own death. Aldoiarova was found shot to death, lying in a pool of blood inside her home on July 26, 2002.

“As far as what happened that night,” Aitbaeva told Human Rights Watch, “… [H]er husband came home drunk… He started to fight with her and she argued back. Then he started to beat her. She locked herself in a room but then he tried to get through the window. He got in through the window and he took her outside and pushed her down. He shot her in the throat and killed her. He then dragged her body back into the house.”²⁰²

Only after years of struggle by Aitbaeva—who demanded that her daughter’s body be exhumed so that new forensic tests could be conducted, insisted on a change of venue for the court hearing, and persistently pushed for justice in the case—did the authorities successfully prosecute Aldoiarova’s husband, Nurbek Estebesov, for murdering her. Estebesov is now serving a 14-year prison term. Iskra Aldoiarova’s case illustrates how particularly challenging it can be to hold a man accountable for violence against his wife, even in a case of murder, when he is a police officer or has relatives in law enforcement. Estebesov was both a police officer and the son of a law enforcement officer.

From the first moments after Aldoiarova’s death, police appear to have been engaged in a cover-up. Aitbaeva said Aldoiarova’s father and father-in-law went to the house to try to find her, and “Her husband came out of the house and said that she was lying in a pool of blood….” When police officers arrived at the scene, they pronounced her death a suicide. Authorities opened a criminal case to investigate the suicide and illegal possession of firearms. Aitbaeva said, “We thought at first that the police were working [on it]…. [A year later] the investigator… told me, ‘My personal conviction is that there was no murder here.’ I became convinced he was hiding something, that he wasn’t doing his job.” Aitbaeva began to push for further action on the case. “We went to court and asked for an additional investigation. I didn’t believe that the procuracy was doing a proper job because he [Aldoiarova’s husband] worked for the police.” She succeeded in getting the case transferred to the military procuracy.²⁰³ As a result of this investigation, Aldoiarova’s husband was charged with murder and the case went to court. Aitbaeva said, “We demanded a lot of expert analyses: ballistics, forensics, etc. The civilian procuracy’s expert had determined ‘She had possibly shot herself,’ when this is not at all what had happened. He appeared in court drunk. We believe that he must have been paid by her husband’s family.” By contrast, she said, the military investigator was very professional, “He checked everything and determined that she had been shot and murdered 24 hours earlier [before the family had found the body]. He found a lot of shortcomings and mistakes in the civilian prosecutor’s work.” Nonetheless, the first military court acquitted Aldoiarova’s husband. “The judge was drunk. We were shocked,” Aitbaeva recalled.²⁰⁴

The family appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which convicted Nurbek Estebesov of murder, assault, and illegal possession of weapons and sentenced him to 14 years in prison on June 17, 2004.²⁰⁵

Aitbaeva speculated that not only did police “solidarity” inhibit a genuine police investigation and accountability, but that bribery also played a significant role in the extraordinarily shoddy police work and ill-founded first court decision regarding the shooting death of her daughter. She conjectured about the officials responsible for the early stages of the case, “I think his family paid them. Paid all of them. Of course I don’t have any evidence. But why else would the expert and the judge appear in court drunk? And why would they commit a crime like giving false testimony or falsely acquitting someone?”²⁰⁶

Aitbaeva has since become an activist on violence against women and follows other cases in northeastern Kyrgyzstan when violence has led to a woman’s death. She recounted another case from Tiup in which a young woman had been murdered by her husband, also a police officer, sometime between 2002 and 2004. The husband had tried to avoid punishment also by claiming his wife had committed suicide by hanging herself. In the end he was found guilty and was convicted.²⁰⁷

Anecdotal accounts like this second Tiup case were generally the only other information Human Rights Watch obtained about cases in the past few years in which domestic violence had led to the death of the woman. This is due in part to the lack of disaggregated statistics on violence against women. Aitbaeva stated that her daughter’s case and the Tiup case, both of which resulted in prosecution, stand out as exceptions.²⁰⁸ We received from her and from other activists accounts of what appear to be unpunished murders that lend support to this view, including the following:

In 2003, in the village of Spari-Dobe in Tiup district, 65-year-old Nurdin Risaliev allegedly beat his 14-year-old wife, Gulzat Momunova, to death. NGO activist Anna Makarova said that Momunova’s mother reported that the girl was pregnant at the time of her death.²⁰⁹ The girl’s mother reportedly appealed to police following her daughter’s death, but officers at the Tiup Police Department refused to open a criminal investigation on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence.²¹⁰ Risaliev was not charged with responsibility for his wife’s death.²¹¹
Law enforcement and judicial authorities failed to hold anyone accountable for the alleged rape and murder of a woman in the town of Dolon, in Tiup district, in 2004. In that case the woman died of exposure after allegedly being beaten and raped by her husband and his friends and then left outside in the cold. The men were acquitted and no one was punished for her death.²¹² Tiup district police said that forensic analysis found that the woman had been drunk and that is why she had died of exposure on the street. The charges of rape were also not confirmed by police.²¹³

Police perceived as perpetrators of domestic violence

An expert from the Presidential Council on Women, Family, and Gender Development asserted the prevalence of domestic violence in police homes. She said, “The majority of domestic violence cases are in homes of police officers. We don’t have exact data on this, but the wealth of anecdotal evidence points to this.”²¹⁴ Leading women’s rights groups throughout Kyrgyzstan told Human Rights Watch that domestic violence by police officers against their wives is common and widespread.²¹⁵ An OSCE law enforcement expert said that police “tend towards violence at home” as well as at work.²¹⁶ Police officers’ own culpability in acts of violence against their wives may contribute to their unwillingness and failure to act to protect women victims and hold male abusers accountable for their crimes. Several women victims of violence by husbands who are police officers told Human Rights Watch of particular challenges they faced to obtaining justice and protection from law enforcement agencies. They are also more likely to feel constrained from escaping from a violent home.

Asel A. recalled the beatings she endured during her marriage to her first husband: “He was a police officer. He was beaten at work and became ill…. He began to drink, he sold our house and sold my things, he just sold everything. When there was nothing left, he began beating me. He would scare me, run at me with a knife. He threatened to kill me.”²¹⁷ Asel A.’s descriptions of the way her husband beat her suggested he was using techniques common to police practice to hide evidence of abuse: “….he beat me with his fists and kicked me. He beat me only on the body, never on the face.”²¹⁸

Experts attribute the disproportionately high rate of police violence against their wives to a variety of factors. The OSCE police experts cited alcoholism and financial concerns; many other officials and NGO leaders view the culture of violence and prevalence of violence in the police force as the major factors contributing to domestic violence by officers.²¹⁹ The director of the NGO Chance, which has followed this issue closely, said, “Many women—wives or girlfriends—whose husbands are government workers, especially police officers, put up with violence. Violence is especially common in households of police officers, because this is the environment they’re in and the way they’re used to relating [to others]. [The officers] take out their work aggression and frustrations on the women at home.”²²⁰

According to NGO activists, police officers themselves claim that the nature of their work makes it inevitable that they will use violence at home. As one NGO leader recalled, “We had a seminar, the gender secretariat under the president invited representatives of all law enforcement agencies. [A senior law enforcement official] was there. He said, ‘They say that police beat their wives. Once a woman came to me and said her husband beat her and I took her to the detention facilities and showed her and she watched the work of the police—how they have to deal with drunks… I said, ‘Have you seen the work of a police officer? You should go home and thank your husband for doing such hard work. How could he not beat you after [going through] that?’”²²¹

Women whose abusive husbands are police officers are often constrained from leaving abusive marriages and are afraid to go to the police for help. Asel A. said, “I never went to the police because he himself is an officer and his brother is too, so I couldn’t go to the police.”²²² According to Nargiza Eshtaeva of the NGO Ailzat in Osh, Elena E., who was beaten by her husband, said that because he was a police officer and many of his relatives were also on the police force, she could not leave him. Eshtaeva said that when Elena E. came to Ailzat for counseling she was afraid even to speak to the group’s lawyer because she feared the lawyer might also know her husband and would tell him what she said.²²³ NGO activists say women’s perceptions that their options are constrained by the fact that their abusive husbands are police officers are well-founded, and that police regard themselves as above the law. Leading women’s rights advocate Bubusara Ryskulova asserted that when a woman’s abusive husband is a police officer, “she can’t do anything, because he says, ‘I am the police, you can’t go anywhere.’”²²⁴ “Policemen with contacts can do what they want,” said another activist.²²⁵

Wives of abusive police officers also may not have access to police protection orders. Activist Nargiza Eshtaeva told Human Rights Watch, “A woman came to us and she was covered in bruises. She didn’t know how to get a restraining order. Her husband was a police colonel.”²²⁶ In that case, although the woman had been hospitalized several times due to injuries caused by beatings by her husband and she had her doctors’ documentation of the injuries, the presence of her husband and all of his brothers on the police force convinced her that she could not turn to the police herself.²²⁷

Police and the aksakal courts

Rather than treat cases of domestic violence as law enforcement issues, police often dismiss them as community matters and pass them off to the aksakals, or community elders. While Kyrgyz law envisions that some domestic violence cases will be handled by the aksakal courts, police appear to resort excessively and inappropriately to this option in order to get rid of such cases, which they deem unworthy of their time and attention. As will be discussed below, in dealing with family matters, including domestic violence, aksakals promote reconciliation, often at the expense of a woman’s safety.

The term aksakal itself translates into “white beard” and refers to a respected elder of the community. Aksakals have long been looked to in Kyrgyzstan for advice and leadership, particularly to resolve disputes among community members. In 2002 the role of the aksakals was codified in the Law on Aksakal Courts. Aksakal courts, local government structures that operate on the neighborhood or district level, now work in tandem with other government agencies and arbitrating bodies to deal with certain community matters. Members of the aksakal courts are nominated by area residents and local government institutions or agencies, and are elected by residents for terms of three years. Only a handful of members of the aksakal courts are women.²²⁸

Aksakals and the law

Kyrgyz law envisions a role for the aksakals in responding to cases of domestic violence. Article 6 of the 2003 Law on Social-Legal Protection from Domestic Violence lists among a victim’s rights, the right to “address the issue to the local court of elders.” It states that, “The goal is a public reprimand of the assailant.”²²⁹

In accordance with article 4 of the Law on Aksakal Courts, the elders can hear and resolve civil cases and cases that have been forwarded by courts and the procuracy in order to apply measures of social influence, in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code. They may also hear cases forwarded by police, but only if police have received sanction to do so by the procuracy. The aksakals can also hear cases addressed to it directly by individuals, with the aim of achieving the reconciliation of the parties.²³⁰ Article 15 of the Law on Aksakal Courts grants the elders jurisdiction to hear cases related to family conflicts, including matters of “national (ethnic) marital relations and traditions related to marital and family relations.” The range of penalties aksakals may impose to resolve family conflicts include warnings, requiring the perpetrator to offer a public apology to the victim, making a public reproach, requiring the guilty party to compensate for material damage caused, or fining the perpetrator up to three times the minimum monthly wage.²³¹

In accordance with article 240 of the Criminal Procedure Code, criminal matters should be sent to the district court for a hearing, not to the aksakal courts, which have no jurisdiction over criminal matters and cannot impose criminal penalties. The only time when the law permits review of criminal cases by the aksakal courts is when the procuracy has already closed the case, and, rather than pursuing criminal prosecution, forwards it on for the aksakals to apply “measures of social influence.”²³² The law dictates that when an act of domestic violence is potentially a criminal matter, it should be taken up and investigated by the police. Only cases of family conflict that would not qualify as criminal cases—for example, where there are no grounds for charges under Criminal Code articles 111 and 112—should be forwarded to the aksakal courts. A human rights lawyer claimed that the division of labor between police and aksakals in domestic violence cases indeed falls along the lines of Criminal Code articles 111 and 112, with the “light” cases going to the aksakals. He said, “If there is severe bodily injury in a case of domestic violence, then the police need to refer the case to the court. If it is a case of light harm, then it goes to the aksakals.” ²³³

In practice, however, it appears that police often disregard the law’s prescription for aksakals to play a limited role in addressing domestic violence cases and forward cases to the aksakals long before they reach the procuracy, even when they should have been sent to the procuracy in the first place for criminal prosecution. One senior police officer spoke plainly about police referrals to the aksakal courts when women complain about domestic violence, “When they appeal to us, we react: we go to the aksakal courts and try to sort this out. There are usually five or six people, they invite the husband, and we talk it through.”²³⁴

Consequences of police passing cases to the aksakals

There are serious consequences to women’s prospects for justice and protection when police pass responsibility for domestic violence cases off to the aksakals instead of treating these as law enforcement matters. The failure of law enforcement personnel to register, investigate and prosecute cases that have c riminal content robs women of their access to justice and the full range of options for protection envisioned under the law. Aksakals, unlike police and courts, cannot issue orders of protection for women at risk of continued violence. Nor can they detain or imprison abusers. Once police pass on cases that would rightly be prosecuted under the Criminal Code to the aksakals, the case is no longer considered a criminal matter, but a social problem.

Few women know that they have the right to appeal decisions of aksakal courts to a district court, which does have jurisdiction over criminal cases. According to the law, a woman can appeal an akasakal court decision, but one lawyer told Human Rights Watch that “women don’t actually do this. Many probably don’t even know about it.”²³⁵ It appears that the only cases in which women avail themselves of this right are those in which the aksakals themselves decide that they cannot resolve a matter—that is they cannot reconcile a couple—and they refer the case onward.

One officer used a de minimus case to explain the circumstances under which officers refer cases to the aksakal courts, “We send small matters to the aksakals and they warn people or fine them. Sometimes we forward family problems to the aksakals. If a man hits a woman once and asks for forgiveness, this is the kind of case that would go to the aksakals. People are concerned about their reputation in the society. The [Criminal Procedure Code] dictates which cases go to the aksakals. Is it better to give a case to the aksakals to decide or better to put someone in prison for 15 days? If you have a completely normal person, who drank once and then hit his wife, then you don’t need to punish him too hard. It’s better for the aksakals to handle this case, to fine him. The neighborhood police officer will help to enforce payment of the fine.”²³⁶

Police without doubt know that sending a domestic violence case to the aksakals means that the man will not face detention and that the aksakal court will most likely encourage the woman to remain in a marriage that may be characterized by violence. As noted above, however, some officers view this outcome as preferable to administrative or criminal penalties for the abusive husband and therefore block the woman’s ability to exercise her right to bring criminal charges or push for administrative arrest. One officer told Human Rights Watch, “We work with the aksakal courts, we have them go to the location and address the situation. We are working with them to encourage reconciliation so that there aren’t divorces.”²³⁷

Aksakals view reconciliation as the best solution to domestic violence

Another consequence women face when police send cases to the aksakals or when women themselves go to aksakals for help, is that the elders encourage women to remain with their abusers, or facilitate their return to violent marriages. Aksakals view it as their role to “reconcile” women and their abusive husbands—one female member of an aksakal court said, “When husbands and wives fight we try to reconcile them.”²³⁸ In practice, abusive men face few consequences other than public exposure, while the woman is asked not only to reconcile with her abuser but in fact to reconcile herself to continuing to live with the abuse.

An aksakal court member from a southern village explained how the reconciliation process works: “When we get the women’s complaints about fights, we summon the men—if he doesn’t come, we get the police to bring him or else we go to his house ourselves. The husband and wife will be here. We discuss the matter and then we reconcile them.”²³⁹ He said that in his village, “Six women appealed to us in 2005…. Three of the women who came to us had fights with their husbands. Two of these reconciled [with their husbands], one went to court.”²⁴⁰

The same aksakal court member added, “When the parents of the couple don’t want them to be reconciled, we give the couple a three- to six-month period to continue to try to live together. Usually they reconcile in this period.”²⁴¹ Human rights activists confirm the use of “waiting periods” by aksakal courts as a means of facilitating women’s return to abusive homes. Said one rights defender, “The aksakal courts try to reconcile people when there are conflicts in the family. Their first priority is to ‘save the family.’ They don’t have the authority to grant permission for a divorce, but they try to give people [seeking divorce] three to six months [waiting period] and tell them to reconcile.”²⁴²

Government officials recognize that aksakals are actively encouraging women to remain in abusive households. One official told Human Rights Watch, “Aksakal courts have a more traditional view, they try to keep families together. They are very conservative and try to save the family and subscribe to a lot of stereotypes and blame women or tell men [the violence is taking place] because they need a job.”²⁴³

Some members of aksakal courts acknowledge that reconciliation can fail to be a lasting “solution” to domestic violence and that abuse often continues after the aksakals’ intervention. In these cases, the aksakals may refer a case to local judicial authorities. As one aksakal put it, “[If there are conflicts in a home and a man is summoned] we give them a specific period to continue to live together and to try to sort it out. We maintain control over the situation, we observe the situation. If there are repeated incidents then we hand over the case to the district court. If we can’t reconcile the couple, then we forward the case to the court. If abuse is happening for a second, third, or fourth time then we give up.”²⁴⁴ In some cases, aksakals can be callous in the face of women’s complaints about violence or refuse to help them at all. One activist charged, “Aksakal courts can help. It depends on the person. Sometimes the aksakals just say, ‘Girl, that’s the way things are. Go back home and reconcile with your husband.’”²⁴⁵

One woman, Dimira D., who had suffered years of violence at the hands of her husband—including being hit in the head with a rock, being strangled, beaten, and threatened with death—said the aksakals refused to help her: “I went to the aksakal court, I asked them to warn my husband that if it happened again he could be taken to court. I asked, if I paid for gas [to cover the cost of the car trip to her house], would the aksakals go to warn him? The aksakal said, ‘No, I know your relatives and that they can just accuse me of something [in retaliation].’”²⁴⁶

Some women choose not to appeal to the aksakal courts for help in cases of domestic violence because they view the aksakals as biased in favor of male abusers.²⁴⁷ One expert on domestic violence and gender issues stated, “When a woman goes to the aksakal court with a domestic violence problem, the men side with the men.”²⁴⁸ “We need women on the court,” she added.²⁴⁹

NGO leaders generally agree that the extremely small number of women members of the aksakal courts makes them an unwelcoming place for women to go. One said, “Aksakal courts are mostly men. They don’t pay attention to women’s issues. Young women would never go to them.”²⁵⁰

Government and NGO views and aksakals’ influence in domestic violence cases

Very little empirical research exists worldwide on the effectiveness of community, rather than criminal justice, responses to stop domestic violence. While Human Rights Watch is not aware of any such studies on Kyrgyzstan, interviews with victims of domestic violence and the NGOs that provide services to them indicate that government and law enforcement authorities may overestimate the power of reprimanding men as a means of solving the problem of domestic violence. Officials who spoke with Human Rights Watch presented the authority of the aksakals, and the threat of public shaming that they wield, as sufficiently powerful to stop men from committing acts of violence against their wives. Some women’s rights NGOs and victims of violence emphasized, however, that scoldings by community elders often have no effect on abusive men. They charge that while the aksakals and state authorities congratulate themselves on having “solved” the problem, women reconciled with their abusive husbands often experience a continuation of violence in their marriages.

One government official responsible for monitoring and reporting on human rights matters in the country claimed that the effectiveness of the aksakals was the reason so few victims had come to his office for help. He said, “Women don’t come to [this office] because they often resolve the matter right at the scene. Aksakals know everyone and when there’s a fight they comeand then they can get an agreement [from the parties] or else they forward the matter to the police. We have respect for elders.”²⁵¹ A police officer asserted, “Young men respect the aksakals and listen to them.”

Overview: A Coordinated Response Needed, including Law Enforcement