| On October 10, Freedom Inc.'s Kabzuag Vaj received the Justice Award, a Governor's Council on Domestic Abuse 2007 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Domestic Abuse Issues. A Hmong woman who has gotten a lot of criticisms from her own community for speaking out against domestic violence faced by Hmong women in abusive relationhips, Vaj deserves our utmost respect and admiration. I watched her educate Hmong women, especially the last batch of refugees from Thailand camps, about women's rights in the U.S. and recent cases of murder-suicides in the Hmong community in Wisconsin. The women initially cited other women's sad stories in the camps; it would be much much later before a few would confide their own sad stories to Vaj. The common request of these women was: "Please don't tell my husband I confided this to you. He might kill me." In the last two years, there have been three murder-suicides in Marathon County's Hmong community as a result of domestic violence. The most recent one involved Pa Houa Thao of Weston who was killed Aug. 28 by her husband, Chor Thao. News reports said the couple was getting a divorce and that this case was a "crime of passion." A Hmong friend once told me that a Hmong man would rather die than lose face in his community, a loss of status that results from role reversal in most cases. In fact, a Ford Foundation study in 2002 blamed the Hmong killings on "the changed economic status of some Hmong women and the violent backlash by men who feel they have lost control" of their women. It further said that "Men use suicide killings as a weapon to keep their wives in line by ... threatening: 'If you don't behave, the whole family will die.'"; Many advocates dealing with domestic violence throughout the U.S. agree that in the Hmong community, spousal violence is an ongoing, rampant issue that people just don't want to talk about. Vaj has long decided to talk about it. "How can anyone change anything if nobody wants to confront the issue head on?" she asks. She wants to empower women and men by educating them about their rights and obligations as Americans and as family and community members, while keeping the best parts of their culture intact. Vaj wants continuing community discussions on domestic violence that would include both men and women in the Hmong community. She wants all voices heard and appeals to all to open their minds and their hearts and be ready to face the truth and change for the better. The Hmong community and the state of Wisconsin have a gem in Kabzuag Vaj. We can learn a lot from her strength of character and determination to stop domestic violence that scares Hmong women to death. We should support Vaj in her efforts. |
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| Heidi M. Pascual* Publisher & Editor, Asian Wisconzine heidipascual@sbcglobal.net * 2006 Journalist of the Year for the state of Wisconsin |
| Advocating against domestic violence |
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| Kabzuag Vaj (right) educates Hmong women about their rights and instances of domestic violence and murder-suicides in the Hmong community in the United States in general, and in Wisconsin, in particular. Vaj recently received an award from the Governor's Council on Domestic Abuse for her efforts. |
| Hmong women speak In the past two months, there have been three murder suicides in the Hmong community: in Wausau; WI; South Carolina; and Fresno, Ca. All were victims of domestic violence. (On Sept. 20, there was another murder/suicide attempt in Wausau. The victim is in critical condition and the husband is fine. No charges have been filed yet as of this writing. This is the third murder-suicide in Wausau in less than one year.) Before this last incident, Pa Houa (nee Vang) Thao of Weston, Wis., was stabbed to death by her estranged husband, Chor Thao, who later killed himself. The couple, who had three children, ages 8, 6 and 4, was in the process of a divorce. -- Ed. We are women -- Hmong women, girls and teens -- and we stand together to say that we are deeply saddened and angry about Pa Houa Vang's death. Pa Houa Vang was more than a murder victim to us. Pa Houa was a sister, mother, daughter, aunt, friend and most importantly, a Hmong woman. She did not deserve to die this way. She did not commit any crime punishable by death. She was a victim of domestic violence and we will hold her name with honor and dignity. We value Pa Houa Vang as a Hmong woman. We value the love she had for her family. We value her motherhood and sisterhood. We value her strength for staying in a violent relationship for so long for the sake of "saving face." We value her courage for leaving a violent relationship to find a new life. We value her desire to continue to live and love even when she knew it might kill her. We understand the violence she endured from both her husband and her community. We understand the loneliness and isolation she felt as a victim of domestic violence. We understand why it took her so long to leave. We understand why she kept going back to him even though he hurt her so much. We understand why she lied about all those bruises. We understand. We are angry that even in death she could not escape him. Isn' it ironic that she tried her whole life to run from him just to end up being buried next to him? We are angry at ourselves as Hmong women because we did not speak up until now when Hmong women are being killed by their husbands. If we had spoken out against the murder of Padelina last year, perhaps Pa Houa's life could have been spared. Our silence did not change anything; perhaps it has done the opposite. Hmong men continue to kill Hmong women at an alarming rate. Hmong communities continue to blame the victim and justify the actions of the murderer. We can no longer stay silent and hope that our community fix it self before another Hmong woman is killed. How many more deaths do we need? In the past two years, in Wisconsin alone there has been three Hmong women murdered by their estranged husbands. If three Hmong women were killed by strangers, the community would be outraged; so why is it that everyone is still silent about these murdered Hmong mothers? We must look inward and ask ourselves, why a Hmong woman's life is so insignificant that when a Hmong man no longer wants to live, he feels he has the right to take her life also. When we start to blame the person who was killed for her own death, then we must question our beliefs and values. As Hmong women who care about Pa Houa Vang, we want to say that we will not allow people to blame her for her death. She did nothing to deserve being murdered and taken from her children and her family We want our families to support us when we need a safe place to go. We want our families to take into consideration our safety before "saving face." We want our families to understand and be patient when we are trying to leave an abusive relationship. We want our families to support our decisions. We want someone to speak up for our human rights even if it means questioning theirs. We want to live a life away from fear and control. We want our families to love us enough to fight for us in life and after death. We want the killings to stop. -- Compiled and condensed by Kabzuag Vaj, Freedom Inc. |