The Minister for Women says Fiji can no longer afford to let its women suffer in silence.
Mereseini Vuniwaqa says violence against women is a cancer that is consuming our society because too many of our children witness the incidence of domestic violence within their homes on a daily basis.
She says many of our female relatives, our grandmothers, our mothers, sisters and daughters become victims of violence in their own homes at the hands of their male relatives on a daily basis.
Vuniwaqa says violence in these circumstances is still being seen as justified and as such it goes unreported.
She stresses that an apology does not cut it and it needs to be punished.
The Minister says if we do not make the message consistently loud and clear now, we will run the risk of raising a generation of Fijians who will grow up thinking that gender based violence can be justified in certain circumstances.
