-let's talk in english-

Thursday November 27, 2008

Stories by JANE F. RAGAVAN
A radio station is doing its bit to raise public awareness of domestic violence.
RAMLI Salleh hits his wife for forgetting something. Tan Chin Siang chooses to ignore the
arguments and screaming next door, and Thiru Arumugam discourages his sister from reporting
"just a slap" since their mother tolerated it before.
Violence in the home often goes unreported.
Only one of these men raises his hand against his wife but they all play a part in domestic
violence.
They are actually "protagonists" in a new public service message (PSM) for Women's Aid
Organisation (WAO) that's been airing over the radio lately. The presentation of the message in
the form of an awards show has the three men up for the best actor trophy.
Ramli is the abusive husband in She Cries At Night, Tan, the apathetic neighbour in Heavy
Hands, and Thiru, the unsupportive brother in Devil's Advocate. They all mirror real-life roles in
domestic violence.
And as in real life, nobody wins in this type of situation, least of all the women who are abused.
"You can never stop highlighting that domestic violence is wrong," says WAO executive director
Ivy Josiah, who sees radio as a good medium for reaching out to all ages and backgrounds.
"There needs to be consistency in educating the public, it cannot be a one-off event.
Ivy Josiah, executive director of WAO
"We've often tried to engage TV and radio in our campaigns," she says. "Our public work, for
example, handing out postcards with relevant messages, only reaches a limited group of
people, mostly those who attend our functions or visit our website."
The people responsible for the PSM are AMP Radio Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Astro All Asia Networks plc, which produced it free of charge for WAO.
The PSM is aired mostly on LiteFM, a station managed by AMP. It has a listenership of 439,000
and is the No.4 English-language radio station in the country.
It comes on throughout the day between commercials and in every half-hour segment, you can
sometimes hear it twice. That's a significant amount of time to remind people of the serious
problem that affects one woman out of three in the world.
That the PSM is in English, however, restricts its reach. Nevertheless, Josiah is happy with the
initiative and hopes that more radio stations will allot airtime for such messages.
"At present, most of the WAO's educational material is in English and some of it is in other
languages," she says. "We would like to say in the future that all our material is available in
Malay, Chinese and Tamil."
Freddie Kam, a copywriter with AMP's English stations and the man behind the PSM idea, says
he and his team took about a week to come up with it.
"I remember as a child, hearing young kids and women screaming in the neighbouring homes
and that stuck with me," he says.
"And so when my boss asked me to come up with a PSM, the first issue that came to mind was
domestic violence."
AMP produced the PSM on its own initiative, produced in-house and paid for by an internal
budget.
"There was no prompting from us," says Josiah. "We really appreciate that. This demonstrates
how well-known the work of the WAO is."
The voice talents also did it for free.
"Except for one voice talent, everyone else was from AMP," says Kam.
To give you an inkling of the cost of just part of the production had the segment been a paid
advertisement, the going rate for voice talents in radio commercials is RM10 per second and
there were seven or eight of them involved in the one-minute PSM.
Once production was completed, AMP took it to the WAO for approval.
"The various scenarios (in the PSM) depict the actual situations accurately. We don't want to
reinforce the myth that domestic violence just happens among the drunk and poor.
"In the 26 years of WAO, we still find educated women who think it is their fault when their
husbands abuse them. They think they have failed as wives and need to be disciplined," Josiah
says.
Like most portrayals in the Malaysian media, there's the inclusion of a Malay, Chinese and
Indian in the PSM. But in this case, it's an accurate representation of the fact that domestic
violence cuts across all ethnic groups.
"We've received positive feedback from everyone who has heard it," says Josiah.
But more importantly, since the PSM started airing, she says the WAO has been receiving more
calls to its counselling line.
In a radio initiative in 1998 primarily to raise awareness on the Domestic Violence Act, which
had been implemented two years earlier, WAO started receiving more phone calls for
information and counselling. Its profile was raised as more people associated the organisation
with domestic violence aid.
In the first six months of this year, WAO received 371 phone calls from victims, friends and
family members asking social workers for advice on domestic violence. The WAO Refuge, which
is also a centre for the organisation's activities relating to family, women and domestic violence
issues, provided shelter to 35 battered women and their children.
A lot of violence in the home often goes unreported but the number has been rising, with
victims increasingly recognising their rights and the need to speak up. Last year, there were
3,756 reports of domestic violence made to the police compared with 3,264 in 2006 and 2,093
the year before.
"We would like to have a radio show. We have enough issues to talk about," says Josiah.
And talk about it, we must. Whether you are a victim or know it's happening to someone else,
you need to speak up. As the PSM so clearly reminds us, "when something is wrong, act right".
 If you haven't heard the PSM on the radio yet, go to wao.org.my and click on the public
service message button. WAO's counselling line is Tel: 03-7956 3488.