Report violence, says minister

Addressing gender-based violence and violence in general should involve everybody, including the victims, says Minister for Youth, Religion and Community Development Soroi Eoe.
“Violence is an ongoing issue, the victim is always threatened in every possible way, so it is an issue of women or girls taking a tough stand and reporting situations and problems to authorities, or even raising the issue with close siblings, sisters, father or brothers,” Eoe said.
“Sometimes in PNG, we have men going out and saying that’s my wife, I have every right, I paid bride price, all these kind of stupidity that goes on.”
He said often it was very difficult to speak but efforts must continue to encourage victims to speak.
He said the reality today was that many cases were often dropped because husbands who were perpetrators were also breadwinners for families.
“So where does government make interventions? There are some discussions being made.
“For safe house, churches are already involved, partners are already involved, some of the things that we will be doing on the ground are buildings to accommodate these kinds of victims.
“The end result could be death or a broken hand, or an eye being smashed, so she must make that decision. Where do we accommodate her? We are addressing that through partnership with others.
“We want to make sure that these perpetrators must be arrested and put behind bars for a good number of years.
“We need to come up with mechanisms to protect the victim.”
Secretary Anna Solomon said the issue was not just about victims but also about the bystanders in incidences of violence.
“The most obvious is the victim so her mind is not very clear; there are many things that are affecting her,” she said. “But the big message and call should go to the bystanders. Many of us are still bystanders, we continue to see these acts happening but fail to do anything about them.”