Although police are tight-lipped about any possible suspects in the horrific murder of Surrey school teacher Manjit Panghali, emotional discussions in the Indo-Canadian community for the past week have been centering around violence against women.
Also, last week 40-year-old Paramjit Singh Ghuman killed himself after wounding his wife, Gurjeet, 39, in an attempted murder-suicide in Port Coquitlam. Ghuman had been charged with assaulting his wife on July 13. His bail included conditions that he stay away from his wife and not possess any weapons.
The community is right now feeling terribly embarrassed about the violence against women issue.
Just two and a half years ago (April, 2004) there was some good news for the community when Surrey RCMP Constable Tim Shields told The VOICE that domestic disputes in the Indo-Canadian community had "gone down significantly," noting that in the past there had been "a massive growth" in Indo-Canadian-related domestic assaults. But even then he had cautioned: "It's still a serious problem, but not to the extent that it was in the past."
It STILL is, unfortunately - and every Indo-Canadian male and female I spoke to about it in the community this week admitted it was still a HUGE problem.
Back in 1995, I had started a campaign against it and among those who wrote several columns on this issue for me were nationally-known registered social worker Shashi Assanand, who is executive director of the Vancouver and Lower Mainland Multicultural Family Support Services, and well-known human rights activist Raminder Dosanjh. Both these brave women suffered a lot of insulting comments from members of our own community at the time. But we didn't give up.
This week, in a discussion with Assanand on this subject, I said that I expected violence against women to go away with the second generation and she responded: "I don't think it has gone away just because it's the second generation. I think people becoming excitable about their feelings and acting on them compounds the problem whether you are first generation or second generation."
She added: "And the fact is that sometimes people from the second generation may think that there is no need for a service because they know the language and that there is no need for culturally specific services because they don't think culture is a factor, but I must say that culture is a factor in most of the cases even for the second generation - language may not be, but the culture is."
Assanand, who has dealt with such issues in many communities for over three decades now, explained how domestic violence affects EVERY community, in fact. She said: "So many emotions are involved, so many people and circumstances and what happens in intimate relationships which excites people to do things that sometimes they hadn't even thought of before. So I don't think it's something that is going to go away completely for a very, very long time."
But in the midst of all this, things are slowly improving. Assanand said: "What has happened in our community is that at least people are talking about it and they are not sort of shunning anyone who talks about the issue.
You have taken the cause up and actually written about it in the paper and I see discussions on the radio and other ethnic newspapers talking about these things. So there has been a breakthrough in dialoguing about this issue.
"We continue to get cases of abuse…but the attitude has changed in the sense of recognizing that there is a problem and the denial seems to have gone down - people are acknowledging that there is a problem and we have to do something about it. For a while you don't hear anything about it and suddenly an incident happens and it happens all over again. So it's unpredictable."
Assanand said: "We have a very heavy caseload with the South Asian community. But then the same thing is happening in the Chinese community as well. It varies from time to time. I don't want to specify that it's only the South Asian community - it's all communities. But I think our number (of cases) is pretty large as a cultural group and then so is that of the Chinese; so our sense is that we'd see more of those two groups (regarding domestic violence)."
When asked what was the best way to tackle the issue of domestic violence at this stage, she replied: "I think the media is the best way to get to the community because people read the papers at their own leisure and they talk about it amongst themselves. So it's a very good educational tool. I think it makes people think about the pros and cons about that kind of behaviour.
"The governments have always taken family violence in the past two decades more seriously. So from the system's perspective, it's still a very high priority issue."
She suggested that everybody should work hard at concentrating on the issue and not become complacent about it. They shouldn't start to believe that everything's fine now and that everybody understands the problem.
She said: "It will be a very long time before we come to a point where we can say 'okay, it has stopped,' because the inequalities between men and women still exist; vulnerability of women still exists.
"More immigrants are continuing to come into Canada. When you look at all those things and the culture shock and immigration experiences, the compounding of the factor that they are in a new country and have totally different expectations, role changes such as women working whereas (back in their former country) they never worked, all those kinds of things - I don't think one can be complacent about it."
Back in 2004, when I reported on domestic violence cases going down in Surrey in The VOICE of April 17, 2004, in an article entitled, "Surrey sees significant decline in domestic disputes involving Indo-Canadian families," then, too, Assanand had warned against complacency in tackling violence against women.
At that time I had pointed out what she had told The VOICE back in October, 2000, on the same topic was still valid.
Here is the relevant portion from that article:
Assanand says: "Family violence is still a very major issue and the issues between parents and children, and issues between families and daughters-in-law are still very much there.
"But what is giving me encouragement is more women are coming out and seeking help. So are more children. Even within the system there are a lot of social workers that are hired from the South Asian community. So there is more access to the children where services are concerned."
She believes that eventually the strength that vulnerable people - the women and children - gain through everything they learn is what brings the change.
"So that's what I think - the fact that women are changing, the children are changing and as a result, the families are realizing that they have to accommodate the change and I think that accommodation to a degree is taking place".
But she also points out: "I still won't say it has happened, because Indian families are at different levels - some who have been in Canada for many, many years, those who are still in a transition period and those who are very new immigrants."
But India itself has changed a lot in the past decade and so immigrants do not have the attitudes they had 20 years ago.
"They are more progressive now. So that is a change in itself. They are exposed to many different things in India now. So when they come here they are able to access services available to the."
But again, as she notes: "Some families from India are very westernized and some are still very, very traditional. It depends on where the families are coming from - rural or urban. That is there, but I am looking at the larger picture: there is definitely a change."
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