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Domestic violence figures in Indonesia are barely collected, but Australian Kate Walton is trying to change that
ABC Radio Australia - October 27, 2016
In a Jakarta hospital room, a bruised and battered young woman sits on a bed and speaks of the moment her boyfriend beat her so badly she thought she might die.
The still-red bruising around her neck shows the force he used as he tried to choke her, while the bleeding in her eye, the deep black rim around it and her swollen broken nose reveal how her fears of being killed were by no means unfounded.
Saori, 25, said she had dared to argue with a man who had hit her before when he'd been drunk. This time she said he was sober.
"It happened so fast, I was afraid. Would I come out alive?" she said during an interview with the ABC from her hospital bed. "He grabbed my neck and punched me twice, that's what I remember."
In Indonesia this year at least 154 women are believed to have been violently killed, most commonly by their husbands and partners. Last year more than 316,000 experienced domestic violence.
The problem is the figures are not precise and are very likely to be an underestimate. Indonesia does not have any consistent or official way of documenting cases of a crime so taboo that women rarely even go to the police to report it.
Helga Inneke is a domestic violence survivor who now runs Indonesia Inspiration, an NGO aimed at empowering women to leave violent relationships. "The domestic violence in Indonesia is more complicated because it is related to culture and that culture is formed by religion," she said.
"When a case reaches the police, it is as if the woman has made a report to a local neighbourhood leader, it is considered a domestic matter, and often she is asked to make peace."
'I was hysterical beyond belief'
In a home on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital, another family is mourning.
In their living room, their 26-year-old daughter Ani Fitriani was killed by her husband, who made her kneel in prayer position before shooting her in the head. Her husband then killed himself. Her father Dayat Hidayat was the first to arrive on the scene.
"I was hysterical beyond belief," he told the ABC through tears. "I was screaming, I am a parent, to see my daughter in that position."
"My daughter was over here in the kneeling position and her forehead was on the floor," he said pointing to the spot where she had effectively been executed. Her two young children were asleep in rooms nearby.
Mr Hidayat called on the Indonesian Government to do more to protect women in violent relationships. "A big number of men are killing their spouses. The Government should be aware and have a solution to that," he said.
No official figures kept on murdered women
But far from a solution, the Indonesian Government does not even collate figures of women murdered by their husbands.
Australian expatriate Kate Walton has taken on the task, by collecting information via simple Google searches and internet cross-checking. One hundred and fifty-four women are on her list this year, killed mainly by their husbands and partners.
"Obviously the figures I collect are based on media mentions, I don't have links to the police or other sources of information," she told the ABC. "I do suspect it really is that cliched 'tip of the iceberg' as to what is really happening."
Indonesia's National Commission on Women Protection does collect some domestic violence figures, but their accuracy cannot be guaranteed because they are largely collated from the nation's religious courts, and not from police records.
In 2015, the Commission found 316,742 cases of domestic violence against women, a figure that has been progressively increasing over many years. But it does not collect any information about how many women have been killed at the hands of their husbands or partners.
"The Government collects some basic information on violence against women in Indonesia but it's very basic there is not a lot of details to it," Ms Walton said.
She said that's what led her to begin her program called "Counting Dead Women" and she hopes the Indonesian Government can adopt similar research.
Jakarta woman Ninin Damayanti, 35, left her husband after being beaten so badly she was hospitalised for a week. She now runs a Facebook group for women in abusive relationships.
"We just share our stories and support each other," she told the ABC. "We are group of people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who never know when it will be healed, and what we need is to be able to share the stories anytime we want with other survivors."
Recovering in hospital, Saori said she had spoken out to help others. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else. I want to show people that if a man hits a woman once, there will be a second time," she said.
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