The Istanbul Convention, fully known as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, has been causing a lot of emotions for many years. Even your meeting in the upper chamber of the parliament yesterday lasted over six hours. Why does the convention arouse so much passion?
That convention arouses passions primarily because it operates with ideological concepts and mixes them into a text that is praiseworthy. The fight against violence against women is important and has full support – yesterday it came from the mouths of practically all the senators who spoke – but unfortunately ideological things were also mixed in with this document, which order states to include gender ideology in school curricula, which order states, that they have to fund non-governmental non-profit organizations that deal with gender, gender ideology and women’s equality – I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but I certainly would with the gender ideology.
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So it caused emotions because, in connection with Article 10 of the Constitution, the definition given by the Istanbul Convention in Article 3 would also be included in the Czech legal order: the definition of gender, i.e. certain established roles of men and women in a given society. Which in the Czech Republic means that we have one company, but there are countries where there are clearly multiple companies and such a term does not belong in the Czech legal system in my opinion.
You are now done defining gender. We’ll get to what you said before, but for our listeners who haven’t read the Istanbul Convention, I’ll read the definition that’s in Article 3. According to that definition, gender means “socially established roles, behaviors, actions, and characteristics that a given society considers appropriate for women and men.” What is wrong with this definition?
It is very rubbery. It is a so-called rubber clause that can be interpreted very freely. AND woke propaganda interprets such a provision to mean that there is some sort of fluid gender, something between male and female, and abuses this concept to advance its own agenda because…
I’m sorry to jump into it: the fact that no one else interprets it in a different way does not change this definition. I will go back: what is wrong with this definition? And I’ll add to that: I don’t know if you’ve looked, for example, at the website of the Czech Statistical Office, where gender statistics have also had a similar definition of gender for many years. So what’s wrong with it, if the Czech Statistical Office has been using a similar definition for many years?
That’s how the Czech Statistical Office uses it. Even the concept of gender was included in the Czech legal order as such, without a definition, it got into it through an amendment to the Act on Asylum. So the floodgates for this term have somehow opened for us, but the definition was still not at the legal level.
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Its danger is its great flexibility. And I, as a lawyer, when I analyze a text as part of my advocacy, I have to deal with whether it is exploitable for my client. For me, as a legislator, the client is the citizens of the Czech Republic, and I am convinced that the term can be misused.
In your speech in the Senate yesterday, I was also interested in the argument that the Istanbul Convention does not actually have an effect, because the number of reported cases of sexual violence increased in France, Germany or Denmark after the adoption of the Istanbul Convention. So you conclude from this that the convention has no effect. Have you considered that it might be the other way around? Isn’t it precisely a positive effect of the ratification of the Istanbul Convention in these countries that women stop being afraid to report the acts?
It’s not just about the report. Over 700 mass rapes were committed in Germany last year. I think Germany and France have a much bigger problem than the Istanbul Convention definition. Whether the Istanbul Convention prevents certain sections of French or German society in particular from committing crimes, I strongly doubt it.
I think and believe that it was accepted for that reason, in order to prevent precisely these heinous acts, because the definitions in the material part of the Istanbul Convention precisely prescribe things such as circumcision, stoning and other violence – the Czech legal system has of course already dealt with this a long time ago.
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If Germany and France would have been worse off without the Istanbul Convention, I dare not say.
Shelters? Duty of the state
According to a survey carried out by the Ipsos agency last year for the Pod svíčnem initiative in the Czech Republic, 30% of women have personally experienced domestic violence, most often from their partner. 70% of victims of domestic violence did not confide in anyone, half of the victims suffer the consequences even years later. According to another study by Amnesty International, 12,000 women are raped in the Czech Republic every year, but more than 90% of the victims do not report it. Aren’t these arguments for really doing more in the Czech Republic?
Definitely yes. I say, 95% of the Istanbul Convention and its content, I have no problem with that. The fight against violence against women, children, and the weak simply needs to be intensified. The problem with the Istanbul Convention is that other things have been welded onto it that don’t belong there, which I suppose we’ll still be discussing, such as funding or school curricula.
So definitely yes. It is necessary to start working with it. There is a need to protect victims more, both by increasing the penalties for rape and sexual assault.
It is one thing that the punishment limits will be tightened, another thing is that they are actually imposed. Now for the mildest form of rape, if I may say so, we have a maximum rate of five years and yet the courts do not impose it.
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The worse forms of rape are many more and there are rates of ten, twelve or eighteen years. I think there is a mistake in the application of that law. We cannot do much there as a legislator. We can set the limits even higher, but if they are not imposed, it will not move Czech society forward.
I’ll get back to the research after all. Have you thought about the message to the 30% of women who have experienced domestic violence that the Senate did not approve and ratify the Istanbul Convention? Have you thought about the symbolic impact of the message?
This is how it is interpreted by the supporters of the Istanbul Convention. That is why the Istanbul Convention was used and abused as a topic for the protection of women and the fight against violence – to introduce gender theory, gender ideology and the introduction of mandatory funding and non-profits in the whole wide range that the Istanbul Convention deals with.
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This is how it is abused in argumentation. This does not mean that rejecting the Istanbul Convention would mean resignation or perhaps a rejection of the fight against violence. It is not so, these are the unfair arguments of the supporters of the Istanbul Convention.
You talk about the fact that it bothers you that the states that ratify the Istanbul Convention commit to funding non-profit organizations that help victims of sexual violence. This help is out of place in a situation where we still hear stories about a woman who is a victim of sexual violence or domestic violence having nowhere to go because there is a lack of shelters. Shouldn’t the funding of those who help be even stronger?
It certainly had: those who actually do this activity and do not have it set up as a business. And I think, primarily, this should be financed and provided by the state. He should not outsource it through NGOs. The fight against violence and the provision of shelters, the provision of assistance to victims, this is the duty of the state. If the state does not do it, then it resigns, and the state must not do that.
If he outsources it by buying those services from NGOs, he should be careful about which organizations he gives money to so that they are not misused. And precisely Article 8, which lists and defines financial sources, is again rubber-stamped that these funds can be requested by essentially a very wide variety of non-governmental organizations and that money can be easily misused.
According to Senator Hraba, what other factors besides gender play a role in who becomes a victim of violence? And why do they think that non-profit organizations could arbitrarily charge money to the state if the Istanbul Convention is approved? Listen to the entire interview conducted by Tomáš Pancíř.
