WUNRN
SRI LANKA - CALL TO SIGN PETITION TO
STOP TARGETTING WOMAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST SUNILA ABEYSEKERA
Sunila is still unable to return to Sri Lanka or be reunited with her family. By adding your name to this petition you will be sending a strong message to the Sri Lankan government that it cannot threaten and harass activists with impunity. Let them know that the world is paying attention to the future and safety of Sunila Abeysekera and her targeted colleagues working for human rights in Sri Lanka. Thank you!
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----- Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 8:55 PM
Subject: Sri Lanka - Sunila Abeysekera Activist for Rights &
Gender Equality
WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
SRI LANKA - SUNILA
ABEYSEKERA'S COURAGEOUS ADVOCACY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS & GENDER EQUALITY
Noted
Sri Lankan activist, Sunila Abeysekera has been a
staunch advocate of human rights and gender equality for over 25
years. (Credit: WFS)
By Pamela Philipose
Colombo (Women’s Feature Service) – In early 2012, noted Sri Lankan
activist Sunila Abeysekera, 60, was the focus of a hate campaign for having
engaged with the UN Human Rights Council and supported the recent adoption of
the Council resolution on “promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri
Lanka”. She was attacked for having betrayed
Q: Part scholar, part activist, how would you define yourself?
A: Primarily, I see myself as a human rights activist. In 1990, I was
with a group of people who set up something called ‘Inform’, which is a human
rights documentation centre. We monitor ongoing human rights situatins and
create a database of human rights abuses. We have also, over the years, built a
network of human rights defenders at the local and community level. Within
these groups we human rights training and support them in engaging with all
kinds of advocacy at the local level. At the third level, we work at the local,
national and international arena with women. We have worked with sex workers,
lesbians, transgenders, women living with HIV, we have worked on the issue of
land rights with peasant communities and with fishing communities. We also work
with disadvantaged school students in different areas.
Q:
A: There has indeed been a climate of impunity in the country. Many
human rights violations, abductions and assassinations have taken place and
none of them have ever been investigated or prosecuted. Our Constitution guarantees
equality for women and minorities, including the Tamil people, but none of that
gets translated into practice and nobody can challenge the fact that it is not
in practice because of the undemocratic structures that have been put in place.
Q: What have been the specific experiences of women against this
backdrop?
A: There are two things one should say about how women experience the
consequences of conflict in
Here, and elsewhere, there is a clear relationship between the rise of
such incidents and militarisation, the availability of guns, violence as a way
of resolving feuds within communities and the general culture of impunity.
These men who have been in the army and security forces have got used to the
fact that they can do pretty much anything and not be held accountable.
Interestingly, most of the women who have been murdered this way are Sinhalese
women from the south because the soldiers are from the south.
The situation for women in terms of women’s rights in the north and east
is different. Being Tamils and Muslims largely, they are surviving in a
situation where conflict has seriously destroyed infrastructure and
institutions, including hospitals. Whatever hospitals that have come up after
2009 at the end of the conflict, are poorly staffed and equipped. There is no
civilian administration as such in these areas, because they are completely
overseen by the military. So for women who have experienced many years of
insecurity because of militarisation have no option but to go to these
facilities supervised by men in uniforms, and that’s not easy for them. That’s
why we are demanding the return of civilian administration in these areas.
The problems are at two levels: One, the women here don’t have enough
resources and not enough resources are not being allocated to them. For
example, the Indian government committed to building 50,000 houses in 2009 but
in 2012 this intervention is still a contentious matter. No houses have been
built so far largely because of bureaucratic obstacles put by the Sri Lankan
government. Two, the patriarchal system operates against these women. So when
they have to go to the provincial office in order to get the money that has
been allocated, they are subjected to sexual and physical harassment. They
sometimes have to sell sexual favours in order to get an official to sign a
document for example. They have to sell their sexual favours in order to get
the men to plough their land.
Q: Do you agree that women bring something different to conflict
resolution, although they have always been kept out of it?
A: Sri Lankan women have always since the 1980s, especially after the
terrible anti-Tamil riots of 1983, tried to create spaces and organisations
that supported the interaction and engagement between Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil
women. For me, this is one of the most significant aspects about
Women have a different idea about who the enemy is and how to deal with
the enemy. When we talk to them about reconciliation – which is not a
conversation that the government is having with anybody at the moment – women always tell me that if the material
conditions of their lives can be addressed it would make a big difference.
Inherent in such statements is the feeling that it is time that we moved on.
But the tragedy is that, while it would be so easy for the government to
improve the conditions of life for the Tamil people, it has not done so. It
continues to treat the Tamil people, especially in the north in the Vani, as
hostile, as enemies. It continues to arrest them and detain them, subject them
to torture. They continue to be abducted and disappear. The LTTE may not exist
as it used to, but that doesn’t mean the war has ended. For many, many people
the war has in fact not ended.