When it comes to violence against women, the “penal system is corrupt”. The Latvian Justice Minister Inese Lībiņa-Egnere said in an interview with public broadcaster in early May. And Egils Levits, the Latvian President, said that changing the criminal code should be considered.
A debate that has been smoldering for a long time has broken out again in Latvia: It is about domestic violence, stalking and the Istanbul Convention. This “Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence” from 2011 was signed by all European countries. However, the Latvian Parliament has not yet ratified it, ie it has not yet recognized it as binding.
A brutal murder of a woman has now awakened new awareness of this failure in the country. Allegations of wrongdoing are rising against the police and the justice minister sees a general downplay of domestic violence and an environment in which women prefer not to report it for fear of not being taken seriously.
The perpetrator is still being sought
In the city of Jēkabpils, which has a population of 21,000 and is located in the heart of the country on the Daugava River, a man stabbed his former wife to death on a Sunday in mid-April in front of their child and mother. What makes the case even more tragic is that the man was known to the police. He had followed his ex-wife and, according to media reports, had previously attacked and injured her with a knife. He is also said to have followed and threatened another former partner and work colleagues. Again and again the woman had contacted the police and reported them – but protective measures had not been taken. The man fled after the fact and is still wanted. The police doubt that he is still in Latvia.
The woman from Jēkabpils is not alone. According to a World Bank study more women were murdered in Latvia in 2020 than in any other European country. There were four murders for every 100,000 inhabitants. The European Fundamental Rights Agency last collected in 2014 the extent of domestic violence in EU countries. At the time, Latvia shared a top position with Denmark: 32 percent of the women surveyed said they had already experienced violence from their partner.
At the same time, the Minister of Justice complained that there were only a few reports of this kind, the only reason being that those affected did not dare to go to the police. The Istanbul Convention aims to raise awareness of violence specifically directed against women and provides clear terminology.
Why was the man known to the police never arrested?
Edvards Smiltēns thinks that the Convention is useless and that Latvian criminal law already covers such cases. The speaker of the parliament said in a television interview that he had traveled all over the country. Therefore he knows that the population does not support the agreement. Smiltēns is a member of the green-conservative United List alliance, which entered parliament in last October’s election and became a new partner in the government cabinet.
In fact, after an emotional debate in the Saeima, the Latvian parliament, at the end of April, a majority rejected ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Justice Minister Lībiņa-Egnere criticized that most of her colleagues had not even read the agreement. She is a member of Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš’s liberal-conservative Unity party. The convention for ratification had already been prepared during his previous term in office, but apparently the prime minister himself does not find enough support for it in his government. In January, the ombudsman for civil rights warned the newly formed parliament to finally ratify the convention.
The justice minister sees years of Russian propaganda as one reason for the rejection of the convention by both the population and politicians. A conservative Christian opposition politician said his party opposed the convention because it called into question marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Similar reservations had led to Turkey withdrawing from the agreement in 2021.
Prime Minister Kariņš’s cabinet has now proposed changes to the penal code. Accordingly, death threats, physical harm and stalking can be punished with up to three years in prison. But even the woman’s killer in Jēkabpils could have been imprisoned for his previous crimes, instead he only received fines. An internal police investigation is to clarify why this happened.