Fiji Women's Crisis Centre says rise in sexual violence cases

Transcript

The Fiji Women's Crisis Centre says its figures reveal a disturbing rise in the number of reported cases of rape and sexual assault in the first quarter of this year.

The centre says ten cases of rape have been reported to the centre between January and March compared to five each in the 2012 and 2013 quarters.

The centre's co-ordinator, Shamima Ali, spoke to Amelia Langford about its efforts to stop sexual violence and what needs to change.

SHAMIMA ALI: A lot is being done but I don't believe that we are actually using effective strategies and we are not coming in from the same direction, so to speak. We're not all on the same page and I think that is why the message is not getting across. We are not sending out, well we are, the Crisis Centre, but other people are not sending out the right messages to the men. The concentration is on women and how they can prevent it ... they didn't do this, they didn't do that, don't don't go out, stay home and look after your girls...things like that, rather than sending out a very clear message to men and doing a lot of men's programmes on awareness and educating men to respect women's human rights. And a strong message going out and telling them 'we're going to come and get you unless you stop this kind of behaviour'. That is not going out.

AMELIA LANGFORD: I see that the police have also released figures for January to March and they say there's been a 38% reduction in crime against women. What do you make of that?

SA: Look, you know, there is this thing about showing that we have brought crime down and I would question that kind of data because that is not what our statistics are showing and we do know the number of people who enter the police station, who tell us they've been there. We work in the community. There are a number of women who say they are accessing services, the incidents they are talking about. I have not been in a position to speak to the police about that but I really doubt those statistics. I don't know how and where they're coming from. They might be comparing those months but I don't mean that means the incidents have gone down.

AL: Do you consider this doubling of figures quite disturbing?

SA: Yes very, very disturbing and we really need to get down to the drawing board again and see what else can we do and how can we get other people involved. One of the things we are doing in Fiji is we're talking to the police officers. We do training for groups of police officers so that we can work together with the police and they have a better understanding and they also know the decrees. Because one of the areas the police are lacking also are we have a lot of new decrees, good legislation around rape, sexual assault and violence but the knowledge is not there. The training they haven't gone through and that needs to be addressed. Those are some of the things we are doing in response.