National Assembly Delegate Bui Sy Loi: Nghe An's domestic violence data is "problematic"!

At the meeting between the National Assembly's Committee on Social Affairs and the People's Committee of Nghe An province on the morning of March 9, the Department of Culture and Sports provided a report on the implementation of the Law on Prevention and Control of Domestic Violence in the province. Accordingly, from 2009 to 2017, Nghe An recorded 7,490 cases of domestic violence.

Mr. Bui Sy Loi and members of the monitoring team are concerned about domestic violence data in Nghe An. Photo: Phuoc Anh

However, members of the monitoring delegation have many concerns about this data. Mr. Bui Sy Loi - Permanent Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee on Social Affairs said that this data is "problematic" and does not fully reflect the current situation of domestic violence.

Sharing the same view, Ms. Le Thi Nguyet - Vice Chairwoman of the National Assembly's Committee on Social Affairs also raised the question: "When we monitored this issue in Vinh City, the city's report did not include any cases of children or the elderly suffering from domestic violence, but later monitoring at the grassroots level showed that there were cases. So how is the comparison between statistics, report synthesis and the current situation of domestic violence?"

She added that the monitoring team had directly met with a witness of domestic violence - a mother of two children in a commune in Vinh city. “This woman has been suffering from domestic violence for more than 20 years, and during that time, when her husband abused her, he also often beat and scolded her children. In families where violence exists, children are often victims. So why don’t statistics reflect this reality?”

Responding to questions from the monitoring delegation, Ms. Tran Thi My Hanh - Deputy Director of the Department of Culture and Sports admitted that the statistics are not necessarily accurate, because Vietnamese people still consider family as a private matter, and in the city, statistics are more challenging than in the countryside.

Illustration: Internet

Ms. Hanh said: “As far as we know, at the local level, statistics are mainly assigned to village or hamlet chiefs, and in some places to population officials. The Department of Culture is the standing agency, so it only bases on reports, and based on those data, it will synthesize the report.”

Ms. Hanh also shared: “Culture is only propaganda, but if violence occurs, the police must mainly intervene to handle it. There is no cultural inspectorate to inspect domestic violence cases. Here, the reported data, I myself am the unit directly advising the province on this issue, still find it a bit vague, and often the level of trust and authenticity is not very accurate”!