The city of Yiwu in eastern China is set to begin a pilot programme that allows residents to check whether their partner has a history of domestic abuse before getting married.
According to a notice on the Yiwu government website, the city will on 1 July unveil a searchable database that includes the information of offenders from across the country, those who have been convicted, subjected to restraining orders or sentenced to detention over domestic violence since 2017.
“In many cases, the parties involved only know about domestic violence after marriage. By establishing an inquiry database, partners can know beforehand and consider whether to marry,” Zhou Danying, Vice Chairman of Yiwu Women’s Federation, one of the government bodies involved in the programme, told the Paper.
The database is the first of its kind in China, according to the All China Women’s Federation. Officials have assured the public that privacy concerns were considered. Those using the database must provide their ID as well as the ID of the person they intend to marry, their application to the marriage registry office. They must sign a confidentiality agreement.
Those who disseminate or use the information in the database for any purposes other than their own matrimonial decisions will “bear legal consequences”. Users can only search the database twice the year, to look at the records of at most two people.
The database comes after an uptick in domestic violence during lockdowns and quarantine measures across China during the Covid-19 outbreak. Observers say Yiwu’s initiative may be limited by the fact that many cases of domestic abuse go unreported and those that do are often rejected by the courts. Police are also often reluctant to file such complaints.
In 2016, China passed its first law on domestic violence, giving partners new protections but other measures threaten to undermine that. A recently passed civil code requires couples to undergo a 30 day “cool off” period, which critics say could put victims of domestic violence at risk. Defenders of the law said it would not apply to such cases.
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/24/chinese-city-launches-domestic-violence-database-for-couples-considering-marriage
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