Family violence in the Balkans

during my time in macedonia, i became aware of just how taboo a subject family abuse and violence is in that culture... it's rarely if ever acknowledged as a problem and the social infrastructure to deal with it is virtually nonexistent... according to this article, which focuses primarily on serbia and belgrade, it's a problem that affects a large part of the balkans...

”Family violence is a taboo (subject), due to the traditionally conservative Serbian society and slow action by local courts,” she [Vesna Stanojevic who heads the Belgrade-based Shelter for Victims of Family Violence] said.

”The only fear the perpetrators have is that they might be caught,” child psychiatrist Oliver Vidojevic [said]. ”All the research in the region has come to this conclusion. Nothing else matters for them.” The police rarely get involved in what they see as an internal family problem, he said.

Stanojevic says family violence begins when a husband first slaps his wife.

”This is not recognised as violence, but that is the start of it,” Stanojevic said. ”Years of abuse follow, and violence becomes the third partner in a marriage. Besides wives, the children become victims.”

Stanojevic says her shelter has received about 2,000 calls from victimised women since January, a third more than over the same period last year.

”It does not necessarily mean there's more violence,” she said. ”It means that more women are becoming aware of it.”

Stanojevic and Vidojevic say men traditionally believe that their family is their property and that they can do what they want with it.

But the violence could also be due to a high tolerance of violence among a population that witnessed three wars in the past decade ”and got used to everything,” says Slavka Lakicevic, assistant minister for childcare at the ministry of work and social affairs.

imaginary or real, whenever i have been in that area of the world, i have always felt a considerable presence of sullenness and low level anger... it seems to be in the air...

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