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JAKARTA, March 7, 2009 (AFP) - The vast majority of domestic violence in Indonesia is related to financial worries, a welfare group said on Saturday, calling on the government to do more for women living in poverty.
The National Commission on Violence Against Women said about 90 per cent of the 54,425 attacks on women in 2008 were domestic violence cases and 70 percent of those were related to economic issues.
"The government needs to develop special initiatives in order to understand and fulfil the need of poor women in urban and rural areas," Arimbi Heroepoetri, the commission's monitoring head, said.
The number of cases recorded by the group was more than double the previous year's figure of 25,522 incidents.
"We recorded more cases because we had easier access of data from the court, not because of a surge in actual cases of violence," Heroepoetri said.
Indonesia's economy, the largest in southeast Asia, has slowed due to falling commodity prices and plunging demand for its exports from major buyers such as Japan and the United States.
Its parliament has approved a six-billion-dollar stimulus package to protect the economy from the worst of the global economic crisis.
Examples of violence caused by increasing financial woes included husbands beating their wives to force them out to work, according to the commission said.
"Culturally, man men in the country don't realise that their behaviour is considered as violent," Heroepoetri said.
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