Over the past few years, news reports in the Uzbek media have increasingly reported on violence against women and girls, and there are many cases of femicide of women. CABAR.asia training participant Luiza Atabaeva analyzed cases published in the Uzbek media between 2015 and 2023 and proves that most of them can be qualified as femicide.
What is femicide?
Femicide, or feminicide, is the killing of women on the grounds of hatred of women, with the acquiescence of the state.
The UN first broadly defined femicide in 2022:
“Killings of women committed by an intimate partner or other family members (e.g., honor killings) and committed by other known or unknown perpetrators with a particular course of conduct or in certain contexts indicative of gender motivation.”
To analyze femicide in Uzbekistan, we based our analysis on a UN report published in 2022. We studied more than 6,000 crime news stories from 2015 to 2023 on the websites of news agencies in Uzbekistan and identified more than 150 cases of gender-motivated killings that match the UN and European Institute for Gender Equality criteria.
The victims in our database had previously been physically, sexually, or psychologically abused by the killer or relatives, had been involved in sexualized exploitation, had been targeted because of a particular prejudice against women, or had had their bodies mutilated. There are many more cases of women being murdered or driven to suicide, but we could not classify these cases as femicide because of the lack of context.
How does the media cover news about femicide?
Before President Mirziyoyev came to power, cases of violence against women were barely covered by the media. The main Russian-language news outlet, gazeta.uz, began publishing news about domestic violence or femicide only after 2018.
A big contribution to destigmatization of such topics was made by the project “Nemolchy. Uz,” whose head is Irina Matvienko. But femicide is still an underappreciated phenomenon, both in Uzbekistan and around the world.
The Uzbek service of Radio Liberty “Ozodlik”, in a news story about femicide in which women were killed with a knife, describes other cases of stabbings in the family that are not related to femicide, focusing on the murder weapon and family problems rather than on the gender of the victim.
Some jealousy murders are published under the humorous headline “Samarkand’s Othello Killed His Wife.” The Uzbek-language media more often broadcast victim-blaming in news about femicide.
*Victimblaming is a term for shifting responsibility for what happened to the victim of violence.
For example, describing the details of his wife’s murder over an uncooked dinner, UzA news agency concludes that “Qars ikki qo’ldan chiqadi” (an Uzbek proverb meaning that both sides are always to blame). Despite the fact that male anger and the social phenomenon of patriarchy are behind the deaths of women and girls.
Why do men kill women in Uzbekistan?
Media analysis shows that men most often use violence and kill women to show their superiority.
A 21-year-old woman came home late from work that day because of her busy schedule. While cooking dinner, her husband came home and an argument broke out between them because the woman had not had time to clean the house and make dinner. The husband then attacked his wife with his fists and beat her to death. The woman suffered multiple abrasions, a head injury, and hemorrhages all over her body. The man was jailed for nine years. This is a femicide.
On June 13, 2020, a resident of Namangan killed his wife with an axe during an argument and then attacked his 10-year-old, 8-year-old and 4-month-old daughters. The older ones managed to run away to neighbors and escape, but the younger one was killed. This is femicide.
On June 4, in the village of Turgok in the Uchkupri District of Fergana Province, a father found out that his 16-year-old daughter had gone on a date with a boy in his car. The angry man hit his daughter on the head several times and she lost consciousness. After splashing water in his daughter’s face, the father brought her to her senses and ordered her not to speak to the guy again. After that, the girl went into the bedroom and died of her injuries. This, too, is femicide.
Home, Bitter Home
Data collected in criminal news reports do not reflect the full picture of femicide in Uzbekistan, but they are most often used when there are gaps in official statistics. For example, data from the Statistical Agency under the President of Uzbekistan indicates only the sex and age of the perpetrator, but not the victim.
We also could not find figures on murders of women by intimate partners or relatives, and the General Prosecutor’s Office of Uzbekistan did not respond to our inquiries.
Meanwhile, the law enforcement report in April 2022 indicates that of 39,343 reports of pressure and violence against women and girls, 34,330, or 87 percent, were committed in the home.
“There is ample evidence that gender-motivated murders of women and girls are committed by current or former intimate partners or other family members. Female homicides are often linked to men’s need to control or punish women for behavior deemed unacceptable, and the evidence suggests that women are particularly frequent victims of this type of intentional homicide,” the UN report said.
The database we collected corroborates these words. In most cases, the woman knew her killer – her husband, boyfriend, roommate, ex-husband and other male relatives.
Pretexts, Motives, Causes
The main motive of femicide was domestic conflict. In many cases, family quarrels arose against the background of male aggression: because a woman did not give birth to boys, “said words that hurt his ego”, did not perform household chores, wanted a divorce, bullying by her mother-in-law or systematic domestic violence by her husband.
The feminist community, Nemolchi.uz, believes that mahalla committees are covering up domestic violence with the term “domestic conflicts” in their struggle to reduce divorce statistics.
“For many women, the home has become the most dangerous place because here they are abused, beaten and even killed. There is no need to hide murder and femicide behind neutral “domestic conflicts.” Even the term ‘domestic violence’ has become too bland to express what is happening in the country,” one of post in the community says.
Often the cause of domestic violence is unreasonable jealousy or suspicion of cheating on the part of a spouse who sees his wife as his property. This is the second most common motive in female homicide cases.
Cases of women being murdered by another woman can also be considered acts of femicide if the crime is committed for male gain or if the victim does not conform to patriarchal attitudes and cultural norms.
“In the context of such harmful customs, not only male but also female relatives may intentionally attack the victim,” the UN report said.
For example, last January, the court sentenced a woman who, in a fit of rage, took a knife to her kitchen and stabbed her mother 32 times in front of her three grandchildren. The mother-in-law did not like the clothes her daughter-in-law bought her children.
Murder Patterns
The analysis showed that in 60 percent of the cases the women were killed with a kitchen knife or other cold weapons – an axe, a hoe, scissors, or a chainsaw. Most of the victims had multiple stab wounds on their bodies.
In second place were beatings with lethal consequences due to injuries and strangulation. Some of these murders are committed with particular cruelty. The perpetrator resorts to mixed methods of femicide after attempted strangulation, beating with his bare hands, or in order to conceal the crime.
“Other” means cases where women’s bodies have been found, but there are no details about the murder weapon or the nature of the injuries; it is unclear whether the crime was committed, and some suicide cases with gender-based characteristics.
How are criminal cases of femicide-related crimes classified?
According to the database, 57% of crimes where the victim was a woman are registered as “premeditated murder. Some intentional homicides have the aggravating factor of the murdered woman being pregnant or killing children.
Almost a quarter of the cases are recorded under “intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm” and the offender gets up to 10 years in prison for the attempted or murdered woman. These are usually cases in which the husband beats his wife to death with his bare hands.
Also, almost a quarter of femicide cases fall under the article “driving to suicide” and “suicide.
In April of this year in Tashkent, a 27-year-old woman first threw her two sons (ages 4 and 5) out of the ninth-floor bedroom window and then jumped out the window herself along with her one-year-old daughter. All four died. At the time of the tragedy, the woman's husband was in Saudi Arabia, performing the rite of umrah. Information circulated in social networks that the husband had sent the deceased's photos with his second wife from abroad, but the man denies it. Female activists at the Moscow Women's Museum's FEMICID.NET project call such cases indirect femicide.
Dilfuza Kurolova, a human rights lawyer and one of the observers of the bill against domestic violence, believes that cases of incitement to suicide and suicide are the result of repeated action or inaction.
"It is very difficult to prove suicide because there is no direct evidence in most cases and everything depends on the quality of forensic and forensic psychological examination and investigation bodies," said the lawyer.
There are several cases in the database of young girls who committed suicide because of their father's violence against their mother, the leaked photos and their father's reaction to it, or after being sexually abused. However, in all of these cases, the prosecutor's office refused to initiate criminal proceedings.
Will criminalizing domestic violence solve the problem?
This is not to say that the government is not taking steps to reduce violence against women. In April of this year, a law on amendments to the system of protection of women and children from violence came into force in Uzbekistan. A package of adopted amendments to the country's Criminal and Administrative Codes established separate administrative and criminal liability for family (domestic) violence and harassment.
Now not only battery, but also violation of rights (to property, education, health and labor), insults, threats, and forced separation from close relatives are considered domestic violence. In addition, if previously a protection order was issued to victims for 30 days, now it can be extended up to 1 year. Penalties for committing sexual violence have also been tightened.
However, experts and human rights activists working in this area do not hold out much hope for this law because of the stereotypes that have been reinforced in Uzbekistan's patriarchal society regarding women, corruption, and the not too zealous actions of law enforcement agencies.
Dilfuza Kurolova, a human rights activist, believes that the criminalization of domestic violence will not have much effect on the situation of femicide.
"Unfortunately, [this law] will not be able to prevent [femicide] because there is still psychological and financial violence. The victim has the right to take back the complaint and stop any investigation, and that's a big problem. To do that, we need to revise or remove Article 66-1 of the Penal Code, under which a suspect can be absolved of criminal responsibility due to reconciliation," she said.
Another expert working in the field of women's and children's rights, who did not want to advertise it, said that criminalizing domestic violence is a positive step, but that increasing punishment alone will not solve the problem.
"We see that the role of women in Uzbekistan, despite the efforts of the government and a more active civil society, has been declining in recent years. This is also because there is zero tolerance for violence in society as a whole. We also see that a patriarchal attitude towards girls and women is being imposed in our society, using, it seems to me, not quite correct, but rather a completely wrong interpretation of the rules in Islam on the upbringing and role of women in society, which only speak of the responsibilities of women, and forget to mention the responsibilities of men in relation to women," she said.
International human rights organizations have also voiced their alarm. For example, Amnesty International's 2022 report, "Eastern European and Central Asian Women Need Protection from Violence in Crisis and Usual Times," noted that "the situation is further exacerbated by a sharp increase in traditionalist, patriarchal and overtly misogynistic political rhetoric.
While welcoming the adoption of important steps to improve the status of women in Uzbekistan, Amnesty International researchers noted that much "remains to be done to implement the new law, prevent domestic violence, and overcome patriarchal attitudes in society."
"The pervasive, deeply traditionalist approach to resolving intrafamily conflicts remains one of the main obstacles to greater protection for victims," the report said.
How the database was prepared
The data was extracted using a Javascript automation library called Puppeteer, which can control the browser. The source news sites were hand-picked, and the parser code had to be customized for each of them individually, as they were all quite different. The search used phrases that are more common in texts about femicide crimes, such as "killed his wife", "chopped up his wife", "stabbed his wife", "murdered", "body found", etc. The word "wife" was also changed to "woman," "girl," and "girl." The data was extracted in a format and subsequently imported into an Excel spreadsheet. The table had to be worked with manually, as the code also extracted criminal news from other countries, news not related to femicide. Thus, we managed to collect more than 150 news about femicide from 2018 to 2023 and analyze them.
The material was prepared on the basis of the GIJN guidelines, the UN report and the femicide research methodology of Kloop.kg
Contributor: Armin Sarajlic (code)