Because of the war and looking for safety away from the conflict, Salwa and her family returned to her hometown, and she left behind the family’s source of income. She did not expect that violence would await her with all its power, to break her family ties and include her in the list of its victims.
Seiyun- Hani Judd
“My daughter was not spared from her father’s oppression,” with these words, Salwa describes her husband’s cruelty to his family.
Salwa, from the western regions of Wadi Hadramout, says that she had married when she was 17 years old and she was forced to live with her husband, who works in Sana’a.
“Because of the conditions of war in Yemen and the difficulty of moving between Sana’a and Hadramout because of the arduous long travel that takes about a day or more, in light of the insecurity of the road, which happened from time to time skirmishes between the parties of conflict or the unknown fate of the desert that travelers chose as an alternative road, which caused In the husband’s inability to continue working in Sana’a. Salwa said
Salwa had two daughters, one of whom is handicapped said, “Although my family and I stand with my husband -when we returned to our hometown my family opened their house to live in after my husband lived with his parents in a village on Wadi Hadramout, he did not bring me and my family back the favor”.
Salwa says that her husband, after losing his job, became a very horrible person who beat her so intolerably that she expected her fate to be like the victim (Marwa Al-Bayti), who was killed after her body was burned by her husband, who poured gasoline and set her body on fire in November of the year 2020 AD In an incident that shocked public opinion on the coast of Hadramout, activists, and lawyers supported it.
Salwa tells “her daughter was not spared her husband’s violence, who he is a heavyset man when one day he punched her in the neck, causing blood to come out of her mouth.
Salwa was surprised by her husband’s behavior, saying, “Is it because of the loss of work as a result of the war and the economic collapse and the consequences of that in terms of the high cost of living and poverty, or that has no effect, but some people have become demons?”
Two months ago, Salwa points out that she was forced to separate from her husband. Now, she is living with her family.
Huda Saeed, a human rights activist, commented on Salwa’s story that” violence against women is a phenomenon rooted in all societies as a result of the cultural heritage on the one hand and the imbalance of power between men and women, which is often in favor of men.
Huda, the activist, explains that our society is one of those societies where no matter how much we try to pretend to be idealistic and repeatedly deny this violence, it will not change reality. The war has exacerbated this phenomenon, and the number of women who are victims of violence is constantly increasing. She stressed the need to deal with violence against women in our local society rationally and realistically to mitigate its effects on that delicate creature, “which is meant for women. “What saddens me about Salwa’s story is that when she was a student, she told her classmate ( it is not important to study hard because the real life for the girl has been just cooking and servant her husband), but after she marriage, he likened her suffering to (the martyr Marwa Al-Bayti)”, the activist said.
According to the statistics of the Seiyun General Hospital Authority, the number of suicide cases was eight females, equivalent to 40% of the total suicide cases received by the Authority during the first half of the year 2020 AD.
