Thu 23 April 2020:
Iraq is in dire need of new domestic violence legislation after the suspicious death of a 20-year-old woman in Najaf, Human Rights Watch has said.
The New York-based rights organisation has urged lawmakers to act amid the coronavirus pandemic as lockdown measures lead to rising rates of domestic abuse worldwide.
The fresh call for domestic violence protections comes after the death of a 20-year-old woman in the southern city of Najaf last week.
Videos emerged on social media showing a woman hospitalised with severe burns amid speculation she had been injured at the hands of her husband.
The woman’s mother told HRW she had married the man, a police officer, eight months ago and had only been allowed to visit her parents once since the wedding.
In an 8 April phone call from the man who told the woman’s mother that her daughter had been hospitalised after a “slight burn accident”, the mother heard screams.
She told the rights organisations that she was at first barred from visiting her daughter in hospital but was later able to access her hospital room on 11 April.
Her daughter said she had been severely beaten by her husband. She then poured gasoline over herself and warned him that if he continued beating her she would set herself alight.
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“I still don’t know if he lit her on fire or she did it herself, but she told me she burned for three minutes while he just watched, and finally his father, also a policeman, came in and put out the fire,” the mother told HRW.
“She begged them to take her to the hospital but they waited for over an hour before doing so. Her father-in-law then pretended to the police that he was her father and said to them the fire had been an accident,” she said.
Louai Al-Yasiri, governor of Najaf, told HRW that authorities have arrested the husband, father-in-law and husband’s uncle and launched an investigation.
However, the incident would likely be solved through a mediation in which the husband’s clan would reach a settlement with the woman’s family, Yasiri said.
Legislation proposed last year advocates for such reconciliation between domestic abuse survivors and their spouses, HRW said.
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