Chinese top legislature on Sunday adopted the country's first bill against domestic violence in a landmark move to bring traditionally silent abuse victims under legal protection.
The legislation was approved Sunday afternoon by a landslide majority at the end of a week-long bimonthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee.
"The country prohibits any form of domestic violence," reads the new law, which formally defines domestic violence and streamlines the process for obtaining restraining orders - measures long advocated by anti-domestic abuse groups.
Domestic violence is defined as physical, psychological and other harm inflicted by family members with beatings, restraint or forcible limits on physical liberty, recurring invectives and verbal threats listed as examples.
An earlier draft, submitted in August this year, included only physical abuse, but many lawmakers have since argued that the definition was too narrow, Su Zelin, deputy director with the Commission for Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, said earlier this week when briefing lawmakers on the legislation.
They also argued that cohabitation should be covered, Su said, so the new law stipulated in a supplementary article that those who are not related but living together are also subject.
According to Guo Linmao, a legislative official from the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee legal affairs commission, the "living together" relationship covers also those in guardianship and foster care relationships as well as cohabitation, he said. But there is in the law no stipulations on same-sex relationships, he added.
NO LONGER A PRIVATE MATTER
Up till this week, China did not have a specialized law on family abuse. References to the matter were only made in other laws and regulations such as the Marriage Law, the Law on the Protection of Minors and the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women.
Family violence has remained in the shadows for a long time in China, where family conflicts are treated as embarrassing, private matters. Less than two decades ago, physical abuse was not even acceptable as grounds for divorce in China. In 2001 the Marriage Law was amended to explicitly ban domestic violence.
But without a legal definition of the term, many victims - if they reported abuse at all - have been shuffled from police to women's federations to neighborhood committees, with authorities reluctant to intervene unless serious injury is involved.
