Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil war survivors listen to the UN, 2013. Photo: Eranga Jayawardena\/ Press Association. All rights reserved<\/i><\/p>\n
The Sri
\nLankan government is currently designing transitional justice mechanisms to
\naddress human rights abuses connected to the three decade long war which ended
\nin May 2009. But a key question is whether victims of sexual violence and rape committed
\nin the context of the war will come forward and use these mechanisms? \u00a0 <\/p>\n
The silence around sexual violence
\nhas long posed a challenge to determining its nature, scale and magnitude
\nin the context of Sri Lanka\u2019s long war. On the one hand, this is due to the pervasive culture of
\nshame, which deters women from speaking out. Twenty-five years ago, in Broken Palmyrah Rajini
\nThiranagama noted that the \u201closs
\nof virginity in a young girl, even if against her will, meant that she could
\nnot aspire to marriage in our society and, if already married,
\nthere is a good chance that she will be abandoned\u201d. <\/p>\n
The view of rape victims as \u201cspoilt goods\u201d has
\nalways been one of the most significant causes of under-reporting. Survivors and their families are however silenced not only by the shame of rape, but also by fear. Fear of reprisal by perpetrators or of further violence from the very institutions meant
\nto protect them. That too remains unchanged. <\/p>\n
Writing of the post-war context, Satkunanthan
\nnotes that women\u2019s silence on sexual violence \u201cwas possibly their way of
\nnormalizing life and switching to survival mode in the militarized and
\nrepressive post-war phase. They may also maintain silence due to fear of losing
\ncontrol of their stories once they are in the open\u201d. <\/p>\n
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a
\nhandful of rape complaints were made against the security forces from women who
\nappear to have defied shame and fear in order to do so. There are also a number
\nof other women and girls found murdered and raped, with strong circumstantial
\nevidence implicating members of security forces or para military groups. With the
\nexception of two (see below), none of these cases were properly investigated or perpetrators were indicted or
\nprosecuted. <\/p>\n
In
\nthe few cases where there was an indictment the case was never concluded. In
\nmany of these cases medical evidence was not collected in time; witnesses were
\nharassed and intimidated, and cases were transferred from courts in the North
\nto the South where they simply died. The case of Krishanthy
\nKumaraswamy (1996) and the more recent case from Visvamadu (2010) remain the only two where members of Sri
\nLankan security forces personnel have been prosecuted to the end and found
\nguilty of sexual violence and murder. Impunity and lack of
\naccountability for sexual violence has been an entrenched feature of the 30
\nyears of war in Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n
However, following the end of the war
\na UN investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka (OISL) as well as a number of international
\norganisations such as the International
\nTruth and Justice Project, Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch and Freedom from Torture,
\nhave together placed hundreds of survivor testimonies about sexual violence and
\nrape, especially in detention in the public domain. <\/p>\n
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay listens to war survivors in Northern Sri Lanka, 2013. Photo: Eranga Jayawardena\/Press Association. All rights reserved. <\/i><\/p>\n
The significance of these reports in making
\nsexual violence visible in the context of the war cannot be overstated. Incidents of sexual violence and rape are documented
\nin graphic and horrific detail in the voices of survivors themselves. Perpetrators
\nare identified as security forces and police personnel ranging from low-level
\nguards to senior officers who are said to have made little or no effort to hide
\ntheir identity. The places where these incidents took place include secret and known
\ndetention centres across the country. Most survivors say that
\nthey escaped after their families paid a
\nbribe for their release from custody and
\nall of them are now living outside of Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n
The OISL investigators were not allowed into the
\ncountry and had to rely on testimony collected from a distance or from victim
\nsurvivors living outside of Sri Lanka. International organizations
\nhave explicitly acknowledged that it would
\nnot have been possible to conduct research of this nature within Sri Lanka
\ngiven the shame and stigma attached to being raped, the fear of reprisals from
\nperpetrators and lack of witness protection measures. <\/p>\n
These reports are also a call for justice and
\naccountability. They construct sexual violence as crimes under international
\nlaw. They seek to
\nestablish the widespread and systematic nature of these crimes and argue
\nthat they are
\nnot isolated incidents committed by a few errant soldiers. Rather it is argued that
\nthese crimes are organized acts that
\nby their frequency,
\nlocation and nature, imply some degree of planning and centralized control going beyond specific individual perpetrators. In
\nfact, they assert that sexual violence and rape in torture has been part of a deliberate government policy
\nto obtain information, intimidate, humiliate, and inflict fear on persons who
\nwere with or seen as supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). <\/p>\n
Having framed sexual
\nviolence as an international crime, all of these reports call for the full
\narray of transitional justice mechanisms including prosecutions. In calling for
\ncriminal investigations and prosecutions the reports however insist that it
\ncannot be a purely domestic process. The OISL report for instance, calls for the establishment of a
\nhybrid special court, which includes both international and domestic judges,
\nprosecutors, lawyers and investigators. The case for such a mechanism is made
\non the grounds of deeply embedded or entrenched impunity and the absence of a
\ncredible and competent domestic mechanism to deal with such crimes. <\/p>\n
International organisations are also now calling
\nfor Sri Lankan exiles living abroad and particularly those who have suffered
\nsexual violence to be allowed to participate in transitional justice processes
\nwithin Sri Lanka, including by giving evidence. The International Truth and
\nJustice Project for Sri Lanka quotes an interviewee to the effect that
\n\u201cthey would be willing to participate from abroad provided that their testimony
\ntakes place in a confidential environment in which their identities are
\nprotected\u201d. <\/p>\n
They
\nare requesting the Government of Sri Lanka to explore how such a process could
\nbe put in place. They cite as best practices the Liberian example of diaspora
\ntestifying from abroad through video or audio technology, as well as the use of
\nRogatory Letters, which can secure such testimony. i.e., formal written requests made by one judicial body to another in a
\ndifferent, independent jurisdiction that a witness who resides in that
\njurisdiction be examined through the use of interrogatories accompanying the request. <\/p>\n
At
\npresent, the Victim and Witness Protection
\nAct
\nthat was passed by parliament in February 2015 makes provision for witnesses
\nliving in remote locations within Sri Lanka to provide evidence through
\naudio-video linkages, in the presence of a public officer. Responding to
\ncriticisms that this is inadequate, cabinet has approved an
\namendment to the Act, to allow Sri Lankan\u2019s living abroad to testify provided
\nit is given at a Sri Lanka diplomatic mission. <\/p>\n
The
\nIJTP report however states that victims of human rights violations living
\nabroad would
\nnot agree to having a Sri Lankan government official sitting in the room with
\nthem. Furthermore, even if testimony from abroad, gathered in accordance with international
\nstandards is made admissible, international involvement in prosecutions is a highly
\ncontested and controversial issue within Sri Lanka. The President has stated
\nthat no foreign judges will be allowed to be part of Sri Lanka\u2019s transitional
\njustice process. If that is the case, even if victim survivors living outside
\nSri Lanka are given legal standing, they may not be willing to appear before a
\npurely domestic mechanism. <\/p>\n
The attention to and
\nsystematic collection of evidence of war-related sexual violence in Sri Lanka and
\nthe invocation of international criminal law to address such violence has to be
\nrecognised as products of our times. These reports affirm the ascendency and
\nhyper-visibility of rape discourses in international law, the focus of an
\nincreasing of body of critical feminist scholarship. As Fionnuala ni Aolain points out fact-finding and documentation are part
\nof this international discourse of naming, shaming and advocacy. Yet pursuing
\njustice for sexual violence in local contexts such as Sri Lanka is still fraught
\nwith challenges. International normative frameworks and discourses do not automatically
\ntransform or challenge local cultures of shame and fear, nor inspire victim
\nsurvivors to bear witness to crimes of sexual violence committed against them. But
\ncan they contribute to transforming Sri Lanka\u2019s legal culture to allow victim
\nsurvivors living outside the country to become witnesses to crimes committed
\nagainst them?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil war survivors listen to the UN, 2013. Photo: Eranga Jayawardena\/ Press Association. All rights reserved The Sri Lankan government is currently designing transitional justice mechanisms to address human rights abuses connected to the three decade long war which ended in May 2009. But a key question is whether victims of sexual…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}