Martial arts for a martial purpose:
Training self defense techniques for women

By Hallelujah Lulie

It was a fortnight ago that the Japanese embassy hosted the cultural celebration of Tango No Sekku, a traditional Japanese festival at the residence of the ambassador of Japan. Tango No Sekku, which may originally be the Chinese dragon festival, was considered to mark the beginning of the summer or the rainy season in china and Japan.
The festival, which hosts three different martial arts technique namely, Aikido, Judo and Kendo was the combination of the way of harmonious spirit, gentle way of martial arts and sports respectively. The event that is also known as the boy’s festival is used to check the strength and spirit of the Japanese boys in the old days.

Aikido emphasizes blending with an attack and redirecting the attacker’s energy as opposed to the meeting force with force and consists primarily of body throws and joint locking techniques which when applied sensibly divert or immobilize rather than damage or kill. Judo which means the “gentle way” is an art which has a competitive element where the object is to either throw one’s opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue the opponent with a grappling maneuver.

Kendo show at the show which the American ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamato took part in is a sword fencing which used to be practiced since the earliest Samurai government in Japan. Although the ancient festival still focuses on the physical and mental fitness the show at the embassy was focusing more on the exchange of Japanese cultural and traditional values and practices and of course fun.
But for Union Taekwondo club, a martial art training center established before seven years is much more in the art than what happened at the ambassador’s residence. The Union wants to train women not only to have a good spirit and body; it is planning to teach the art for women to fight violence with the support of ‘Tsotawi Tikat Tekelakay Mahiber’, an association working against gender based violence.

“We are the ones who came up with the idea. It is an initiative by the martial art club. We want to do a lot with the art in a way art more than art sake so we went to the association and they were really happy,” Mengistu Minale a black belt master and one of the three instructors who are going to deliver the course very soon told SSI.
“It was a wonderful initiative offered to us by Union Taekwondo club which we really welcomed. They came and told us that they want to support the campaign against gender based violence in their skills and told us the art can do a lot towards that.” Maria Munir a lawyer and executive director of an association working against violence against women tells explains on how her association supported the pilot project.

“Although it cannot be taken as the major solution for the problem, which is serious and huge, we believe it can be defiantly taken as another alternative. It is great that women are skilled with self-defense techniques that they can protect themselves from violence,” Maria says.
She adds that it is not only women who should learn the art, “men who are skilled with the art are disciplined and confident and a confident and disciplined person does not attack others and violate other’s rights.”
Maria who has been a legal practitioner especially on gender cases for a long time says that though the cases, which are being reported to the police and the media coverage of gender, based violence is greater than before it is hard to talk about the general trend of the matter in the nation.

“What I see is that people are becoming more aware. In the old times people even did not consider some violente actions as crimes and were really ashamed to go to the police, the court and most of the cases were not made public now things are changing so fast and more and more women are coming to police and other institutions. But still it is hard to tell the general trend with out conducting a research.”
The Union Taekwondo club is giving the first training for free. The first intake includes staff of the association and women victimized by violence. “In the near future we are planning to expand the program in many places in Addis Ababa and the regions”, Mengistu says.
“We believe that the art is more than just an art. The technique they learn may rescue them at some point of their lives”, he said.

“This is a fine move, but we should deal with the roots of the problem to bring a real answer for the problem,” Maria repeats the common cliché ‘educating the society’ as the fundamental solution for the violence against women but as long as people continue victimizing women the new initiative would seem to work for a while.

May 19, 2007