Activists from a women’s anti-violence movement hold a banner reading “Eradicate sexual violence? There must be a way!” during a protest against sexual harassment and violence against women on campuses, outside the Education and Culture Ministry in Jakarta on Feb. 10, 2020. (AFP/Adek Berry)
Julia Suryakusuma (The Jakarta Post) PREMIUM Jakarta ● Wed, November 29, 2023
Whenever I am introduced to an Italian, my opening gambit is “I became a woman in Italy”. It sounds a bit titillating, but it only means I was there from the age of 13 to 16, a period normally associated with coming of age.
In Rome, where my parents were posted at the Indonesian Embassy, my growing awareness of being a budding young woman was heightened by so much male attention. Wanted or unwanted, I figured, there are worse places to become a woman!
However, a few days ago I read about huge demonstrations all across Italy on Saturday, related to the murder of a woman by her ex-boyfriend. Wow, this is so far removed from my experience in Rome, when cat-calls or wolf whistles, a daily part of my life in the Italian capital, were annoying but harmless.
Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old university student, just about to graduate, was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, 22. He had refused her decision to end their relationship and also resented the fact that she had completed her degree in biochemical engineering at the University of Padua before he did. Okay, so it was a blow to his male ego, but murder? Seriously?
The slaying of Giulia triggered rage and grief, mobilizing an estimated 50,000 people who protested all across Italy – in Milan and Naples, creating gridlock in Rome.
While Italy is definitely not Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Somalia – three of the worst countries for women – according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, 106 women have been killed this year, more than half (55) allegedly by a partner or former partner.
The nationwide protest in Italy reminded me of similar protests in India in 2012, following the horrendously brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student. The public outrage caused the Indian government to adopt legal reforms, but they remained largely on paper. The perpetrators were sentenced to death and executed in 2020, but rape cases continued to occur in India. Some were almost as horrific as the case of Jyoti Singh, and some were even committed by government officials.
How about Indonesia? Gender-based violence cases continue to increase every year. Data from the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry as of September 2023 showed 18,466 cases of violence, 11,324 of which were domestic violence.
Saturday marked the yearly commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, followed by 16 days of activism until Dec. 10, Human Rights Day. Demonstrations and activities to end violence against women were held all around the globe on that day, not just in Italy.
As the United Nations says on its website, “Violence against women and girls remains one of the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violations in the world. Globally, an estimated 736 million women – almost one in three – have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both, at least once in their life.”
Gender-based physical violence like rape is the most obvious type of violence against women. However, there are also more subtle forms of violence that are systematically built into cultures, often under the guise of religious morality.
I was inspired by the life and struggles of Maya Safira Muchtar, an Indonesian woman who faced all sorts of gender-based discrimination and violence in her life but who managed to turn her life around, from victim to victor and healer.
Tragically, her life was cut short at age 49 on June 16, 2023, after she was diagnosed with brain cancer, possibly glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer, a year earlier.
Her latest book, The Leadership Oracle, published posthumously by the Anand Ashram Education Foundation, was launched on Nov. 1 at the National Library in Central Jakarta.
She joined the Anand Ashram in 2003, eventually becoming the head of the foundation in 2008. She was given the name Ma Archana by her spiritual guru, Anand Krishna. Ma means mother, while Archana is loving devotion, to serve God by serving humanity, society and the environment.
I was asked to be one of the three speakers at the launch, but rather than discuss the book, my talk was a celebration of Maya’s life as her process of transformation was remarkable, from victim of child sexual abuse to healer. Besides rape, she overcome multiple health and life challenges and devoted her life to helping others heal their physical, emotional and physical illnesses – holistic healing, which all healing should be.
At age 10, she was raped by her dance teacher, not just once, but repeatedly. Throughout her life she suffered from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction (tobacco), 10 years of insomnia, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and experienced fraud, betrayal and abandonment by some of her nearest and dearest.
In her early 20s, she married a Swiss man around 30 years her senior, and gave birth to two beautiful daughters. The marriage did not work out, and eventually they divorced. Maya returned to Indonesia and had to make the heart-breaking decision to leave her daughters behind as they could have a better education in Europe.
Rape at any age is traumatic, but childhood rape has lifelong consequences, evidenced by the life choices and challenges Maya faced.
When I met Maya in 2011, what I saw was a beautiful, vibrant, dynamic young woman who was always ready to help others. What I also admired about her was her critical and daring stance against patriarchy in all its manifestations, which she wrote about in her books. She hated hypocrisy and turned her rage at many of life’s injustices that she and many women experienced into her spiritual and healing work.
But in the end, the seeds of destruction had been planted in her, and she departed this world much too early. However, Maya is all of us, and her spirit remains to inspire us.
At certain moments, when a tragic rape takes the life of a woman like Giulia or Jyoti, it incites mass protests. But in the end, these protest do not open the way to change. It is deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes – whether in Italy, India, Indonesia or the rest of the world – that need to be changed.
“Patriarchal beliefs of male, heterosexual dominance and the devaluation of girls and women lie at the root of gender-based violence. Patriarchy is a structural force that influences power relations, whether they are abusive or not,” the Asia Pacific Institute on Gender Based Violence writes on its website.
But patriarchy is not about men. Even in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo you find male allies, e.g. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist and Pentecostal pastor who won the Nobel Prize in 2018, together with Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazid human rights activist, for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”.
In a world fraught with conflict, and not just in war, together with men like Mukwege, the only way to eliminate gender-based violence is by destroying the patriarchy, which is harmful and destructive to the whole world, not just women.
*** The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation.
Source: Giulia, Jyoti, and Maya: Victims, victors and healers – Academia – The Jakarta Post
