#16daysofactivism

Today, 25th November, marks the start of 16 days of activism against gender based violence focusing especially on women and girls who are physically abused.
I hope and pray that in Uganda this campaign is taken out of the luxury four-star air-conditioned hotel in Kampala where it was launched, away from the placards and parades from Constitution Square to Parliament.
That it is taken to that woman who dreads the moment her drunk and heavy-handed husband hammers at the door.
To the woman who is battered in front of her weeping children.
To the woman whose hands have been chopped off in a moment of temporary insanity.
And to the woman whose jealous husband has hounded and attacked her at her place of work because he suspects she is having an affair with her boss. And she isn’t.
I recently heard an Australian politician weep in Parliament, as she painfully recalled her mother’s suffering at the hands of her physically and emotionally abusive drunkard father.
But away from stories of violence against women, I want to see and hear from the men who also suffer at the hands of Eve.
The men who are too ashamed to admit that they have been slapped around, that their ears are raw from nagging, men who have been branded with a hot iron and men who have been banished from their homes for no valid reason.
I have heard several experiences of domestic violence - women in India being doused in paraffin and set alight because their families have not paid off the dowry; girlfriends who are boxed in the face because their boyfriend feels that her food should taste like his mother’s; a woman whose eyes were gouged out with a broken beer bottle because she couldn't have sons.
Relationships experience other types of abuse- emotional, psychological, verbal, sexual.
Partners are stalked, their mobile phone messages are checked, they are humiliated in front of guests, they are monitored endlessly.
And more often than not, people are too ashamed to speak about their experiences for fear of being victimized or being seen as “the bad person” and for the “shame” that comes with being abused.
I stand with all victims of violence, with all those who have been strong enough to walk away, pick up the pieces and start a new life.