Vic: Community leaders call for end to domestic violence

AAP General News (Australia)
04-07-2008
Vic: Community leaders call for end to domestic violence

By Kate Lahey

MELBOURNE April 7 AAP - An Australian Muslim leader has joined Aboriginal figures and
other male leaders to tell men there is no cultural excuse for domestic violence.

A new television advertising campaign features Australia's mufti, Sheik Fehmi Naji
El-Imam, and other prominent men, telling perpetrators of family violence to "knock it
off, mate".

Launching the Victorian campaign today, former Victorian premier Steve Bracks said
violence was never acceptable, in any culture.

"No culture accepts family violence from men against other members of the family,"

Mr Bracks said.

"If you're part of a family, and you're inflicting violence on other members of the
family, you're not a family person."

Mr Bracks pleaded for greater reporting and acknowledgement of family violence and
for more role models to speak out against it.

Comedian Akmal Saleh told how he migrated from Egypt as a child, and felt lucky to
be part of a family that did not condone violence.

"In the community where we lived there was a certain acceptance towards violence towards
women and towards even children, it wasn't as abhorrent as it is today in this culture,"

Saleh said.

"My father also had a lot of experiences of violence and he saw it directly, but I
was very blessed that he stopped that cycle."

Aboriginal elder Jack Charles said he had previously been violent.

"I've been treated violently ... and I've committed violence myself, it's automatic,
you do it, if you've been treated violently, you just swing out."

Mr Charles said with age and self respect, he was able to control his behaviour.

He said violence was never culturally appropriate.

"There's one thing I was always worried about with Aboriginal (culture), the old ways
and the way Aborigines treated their women folk," he said.

"In this modern day and age, those old ways, they just don't stack up, it's not on
in our modern society and even in Aboriginal society, it's just not on."

Vietnamese community leader and social worker Phong Nguyen said he was a victim of
family violence and had witnessed the effects of it in his male-dominated culture.

"Violence is violence, it is irrelevant whether you're black, white, yellow or whatever,
I think we all, as human beings, we cry the same, we suffer the same."

He called on all men to take responsibility for ridding their cultures of family violence.

The advertisements, funded by VicHealth and produced by the Spectrum Migrant Resource
Centre, are due to begin on television tomorrow.

VicHealth says one in five women report being subjected to violence at some time in
their adult lives and domestic violence is the leading contributor to death, disability
and illness in Victorian women aged 15 to 44.

Among those also featured in the commercials are AFL Essendon footballers Jason Johnson
and Alwyn Davey, former AFL player Jason McCartney, Victorian Sports Minister James Merlino,
Melbourne rugby league player Israel Folau and author Waleed Aly.

Mr Bracks does not appear in the commercials.

AAP kl/pmu/goc/sp

KEYWORD: VIOLENCE NIGHTLEAD

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