Just six weeks before Tuesday’s horrific case of deadly domestic violence in Surrey, The VOICE had warned about this dangerous situation in my article, “Community and Government Need to Do More to Prevent Violence against Women, Children.” (Lead story in The VOICE of July 5).
I wrote: “Nationally renowned registered social worker Shashi Assanand laments the “disconnect” she finds between the South Asian community, the social service agencies and the government.
“Assanand, who is the executive director of Vancouver and Lower Mainland Multicultural Family Support Services, told The VOICE that she was worried “because we see women still coming out to us; the police are just as involved in cases (regarding violence against women).”
“Referring to a series of murders in the community some time ago, Assanand said: “After all those murders, we had forums, and then again there were murders. So I worry – if even a few years go by without anything happening, I will start thinking ‘yes, there is a change’ – because we see women still coming out to us, and the police are just as involved in cases.””
And this week, her warning proved prophetic.
On Wednesday, Harpaljit Sandhu, 53, of Surrey was charged with second degree murder in the death of his wife, Manjit, and attempted murder in the shooting of his daughter, Sabrina, 22, in the family home.
On Tuesday, August 19 at about 4:40 p.m. Surrey RCMP responded to a report of shots having been fired at a residence in the 14300-block of 72nd Avenue. Police cordoned off the area and conducted a preliminary search of the house.
Surrey RCMP Cpl. Jack Hundial said: “Two female victims were located, both with gun shot wounds. One of the victims was pronounced deceased at the scene, the other taken to an area hospital in serious condition.”
According to some neighbours and relatives of the victims, the family appeared to be happy. However, an Indo-Canadian woman told The VOICE that her friend’s daughter attended the same class as the Sandhu’s youngest son, who’s 12 years old, and told her that he used to say that his father was always fighting with his daughter, who was a student at SFU and also worked part-time.
The accused was a co-owner of Penticton Luxury Taxi and Limo Services Ltd. That is reported to be in the process of being dissolved. Apparently financial problems were plaguing the family and there are reports that the accused, who had moved to the Lower Mainland from Penticton about two years ago, was planning to move back there at the end of the month.
This week, Assanand told The VOICE that there were two factors involved here, the first being that “one is not being able to manage their anger because we never specifically teach that to our sons. We really impress it on our female children how to suppress their anger, but, in fact, we encourage it for the boys. We treat it like a boy’s thing, that it’s okay for them to be (angry) – it’s a man’s thing.”
The other factor that worries her “is the idea that wife and children are a possession to be treated any way they want to. In violence, that is one of the biggest things – it’s across the cultures. But we think that the ownership of wife and children is a really embedded emotion that we seem to practice in our culture.”
Interestingly, a highly educated and well-placed Indo-Canadian woman, who did not want to be identified because she fears her family could be targeted, told The VOICE this week that she finds it disgusting to hear a very popular song by a Punjabi singer – whose lyrics’ translation in English goes: “Take up your two-barreled rifle, you have to take revenge” – everywhere she goes, at homes and at social events.
She said there are many such popular songs by other Punjabi singers, too, that glorify violence and the negative aspects of a macho culture.
Here is the rest of the article that we carried in our July 5 newspaper:
Assanand noted that Jatinder Singh Waraich, 25, who was sentenced last week (June) to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of the second-degree murder of his wife, Navreet, 23, in October 2006 in their Surrey basement suite, said he didn’t realize what was happening to him after the first time he stabbed her. (He stabbed his wife 39 times).
She said: “I worry that the anger is so great here that (the men) totally lose control of their mind.”
She said that until there is a shift in the attitude of men who view women as “property,” such incidents could happen again.
She pointed out that the same men do not go about hitting or killing their employers. Yet they think it is okay to hurt their wives and children.
Though Assanand said that the community had “definitely progressed,” she feared that the situation might get worse before it gets better.
She said: “I am sort of afraid to raise my hopes because the moment you start saying it’s improving, you suddenly find so many murders.”
She stressed the need for “a complete attitudinal change on how we regard our women in our culture, that they are not a possession but are people who have similar feelings as men.”
She also noted: “Wife-killing and child-killing come together – they are like a package – and I think we need to focus on both because the whole point is that the men haven’t learn to control their anger.”
She said that in talking to young men and young women in the community she still finds a divide in the way that they think what family life is and that “freedom to be equal is not there.”
Assanand then lamented that the service agencies were not getting the level of support that they needed from the community. She stressed that “the support of the community in our work is absolutely essential.”
Yet the community seems to think that the social organizations that have spent so many years in so much work are not doing anything. So the community actually becomes a barrier in a way by not acknowledging, recognizing and supporting the services because they give out a wrong message – “they think that the agencies are there to divide the homes, break the homes, that kind of thing, instead of saying ‘yes, they are here to keep us together.’”
Assanand said that it was really important that the media and the community put forward phone numbers of service providers because none of the murdered women ever had contacts with them.
She said: “What I am wondering is why is it that they are not getting the message. (Instead,) they are getting the message go to just anybody and talk to anybody. Everybody doesn’t have the skills or does not have the capacity or the know-how of how (to handle this.)”
So it was essential for the community and the service agencies to be on the same page and that would then put pressure on the government to support the agencies with more funds.
Assanand noted: “Agencies are doing what they have to do, no matter what. Of course, more money is required to hire more people to do this work.”
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