This local hearing in Kolar district was my very first witnessing of a local hearing in preparation of the Indian Women’s Court.

The Women’s Court are not seen as an event in itself, but as a process. And so in a period of 18 months before the Court would take place in July, the core partners of the Women’s Court, together with women’s and human rights organizations, students, Trade Unions and other civil society organizations in their region, organized many events in their towns/states/regions. I was lucky to witness 2 local hearings in the state Karnataka, one in Mandya district, the other in Kolar district.

In a 2 hours drive (or was it 3 hours, I forgot) we went to Medehalli, Vemgal, in Kolar. The issues focused on were dowry abuse / murders and resistance by women to the violence they faced in marriage and in settlement of marriages.

I didn’t understand the language they were speaking, but what more words do you need when a mother and/or father get’s up the stage and explains the story of her/his daughter’s marriage and how this daughter was poisoned or burned, abused and killed because they couldn’t pay the always growing questions of dowry. Some of these parents had their granddaughter or grandson with them, children who lost their mother because of this dowry violence. At lunchtime a father of a murdered woman gave his grandson a photo of his mom in his hands and wanted me to take a picture of them. A time later, people’s attention wasn’t on him anymore, I saw this same boy with his mom’s photo in his hands. My heart broke, what was going on in this boy’s mind…