Eliminating Violence Against Women and Children Through Media Development in Aceh, Indonesia

By: Tabrani Yunis

There are still many cases of violence experienced by the women and children in Aceh. Unfortunately, most of the domestic violence or domestic abuses seem to be hidden. There are some factors that make all these cases becoming hidden and unheard or unreported. The first factor is that the understanding of the people on what they mean with the violence. Most people think that when there is a quarrel or disputes in the family, which tend to fall into the domestic violence, other people out of the family cannot stop it. What they think that is not your business. It is my family’s business. Do not care what happens with my family. Therefore, sometime when is fatal, the problem becoming as the public responsibility. The second factor is that most of the domestic violence, which experienced by women, cannot be reported because women do not know where they should tell or report the cases. The problem is that women, the victims of the violence are afraid to tell it or report it to other people. Therefore, more women who have been victimized just chose keeping silent, facing it patiently. Women are afraid if the husbands will divorce them or they are afraid if the husbands will be angrier. The third, women will always be very shy to tell about the disputes of the quarrel to other people, even sometimes they are hurt. Unfortunately, women are also afraid if the law is not committed to them, because of cultural and society’s perspective which will always blame them. There are still many factors we can identify from the community.

As it is found in the monthly discussions run by Center for Community Development and Education (CCDE) Banda Aceh, many kinds of domestic violence occur in their families such as slapping, biting, boxing, injuring, burning or other kind of torture and incest in the family or also the rapes. Even then it can kill the victims, etc. The violence does not happen only between husband and wife, but also toward children. Many cases such as hurting or beating happen where husband can easily slap his wife when he is angry or when he feels he is not satisfied with his wife’s services or vise versa. Or when they disputes and they quarrel, man can hurt and kill his wife or women sometimes can do the same thing.

In the discussions, women can describe and explain the household tragedy with other participants. But, poor they are, because they do not know how to escape from this tragedy. Therefore, since the cases of domestic violence and abuses happen any times and can hurt or kill any times, it needs a strong effort to stop violence toward women and children. The question is how to stop it? We all agree to stop the violence toward women and children. There is no other reason, just one thing to do, “ Stop the violence”

Bases on those cases, Center for Community Development and Education as an NGO, which works for empowering and strengthening women, girls and children, CCDE has been trying doing some strategies. First, build women’s capacity to voice their problem through educational and financial services. Second, Building women’s campaigning capacity by writing in media. Therefore, Centre for CCDE) since 2001, CCDE started to build women’s writing capacity through basic creative writing training, communication training and others. Hence, women were trained how to write from very simple one to be more complicated. At least women can express their problems such as the violence they experience, even a very short article. In January 11,2003 CCDE started to publish POTRET magazine, where women from the grassroots can send their articles and published in POTRET magazine as means of building women media of expression. It is also a bridge for women to convey them to the public media by. This big dream appeared based on the reality above. CCDE tries to break the silence and solves the problems of women by building women’s writing habit.

Some good progresses achieved and some changes happened. POTRET is published monthly and the number increased from 1000 to be 3000 copies. All women can contribute in this magazine now. CCDE also publishes the www.Potret-online.com, www.ccde.or.id, and in May 2013 CCDE publishes children magazine, called Anak Cerdas. All these media are dedicated for promoting women, girls and children’s rights. So, we make them promote and advocate themselves.