China passes first-ever anti-domestic violence law

China’s first-ever law against domestic
violence fails to cover some potential
victims and has taken too long to pass,
campaigners said Monday after it was
approved at the weekend.
The standing committee of the National
People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp
legislature, adopted Sunday the Anti-
Domestic Violence Law, which defines
family abuse and streamlines the process
for obtaining restraining orders —
measures long advocated by
campaigners.
Previously the issue was only referred to
in separate laws and regulations
addressing other matters such as
marriage and protection of children,
according to the official Xinhua news
agency.
Nearly a quarter of Chinese women who
are married have experienced domestic
violence, figures from the Communist
Party-linked All-China Women’s
Federation showed, according to Xinhua.
But the issue has long been sidelined as
a private matter. Without a legal
definition of the term, many victims — if
they report abuse at all — have been
shuffled from police to women’s
federation to neighbourhood committee,
with authorities reluctant to intervene
unless serious injury is involved.
Less than two decades ago, physical
abuse was not even acceptable as
grounds for divorce in China, and it was
not until 2001 that the marriage law was
amended to explicitly ban domestic
violence for the first time.
The new law, which will take effect from
March, defines domestic violence as
“physical, psychological and other harm
inflicted by family members with
beatings, restraint or forcible limits on
physical liberty, recurring invectives and
verbal threats”, according to Xinhua.
It obliges police to step in immediately
when a report of abuse is filed, it
reported.
But anti-discrimination group Yirenping
said the law was “far from enough” since
some forms of abuse, such as sexual
violence and domestic violence between
same-sex couples, were not addressed.
It also came no less than 20 years after
Beijing hosted a landmark United
Nations conference on women.
“China spent too many years to enact the
basic law on women’s rights protection,
it’s really too slow,” Yirenping said in a
statement.