By Farah Mihlar
Earlier this year I was in my home country Sri Lanka on research. The little Indian Ocean Island in the last year has plunged back into war leaving more than 3500 civilians dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. The recent battles fought mainly in eastern Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers - the militant group fighting for a separate state for ethnic Tamils - shattered a five year cease-fire that had given a breather to the country plagued by over two decades of conflict.
In the outskirts of the eastern town of Batticaloa the bare land is lined with thousands of tiny white tents housing some 290,000 people who fled their homes. Families, some with four of five kids, live cramped in each one of the tent.
When we visited the camps it was mostly women who were there. They talked of their harrowing experience of fleeing their homes dead at night whilst explosives rained down on them. As we spoke explosions could be heard in the nearby villages. At the time, the government faced with severe criticism over the huge numbers of displaced and the subsequent humanitarian crisis, had decided to repatriate these families to some villages deemed safe. The women told us they did not want to go back. 'As long as the army is there we don't want to go back. They have in the past attacked us and raped women....and as long as they are there the Tigers will try to attack them and we will be in the middle,' they said.
For most women living in the conflict ridden areas violence and brutality is part of their everyday life. Women have been the worst affected in the Sri Lankan conflict. They have been killed, injured, raped, tortured, trafficked, harassed and physically and sexually assaulted. The Sri Lankan military has in the recent past markedly improved their reputation vis-à-vis the treatment of women but in a highly militarized society women still live under tremendous risk.
Women are also targeted for attacks by various militant and armed groups operating in Sri Lanka's conflict areas. Some years ago I recall visiting a Tamil Tiger training camp for women. The women talked of how empowered they were within the movement, how they had equal opportunity to men to be able to fight in the battle grounds. Revering their highly disciplined male counterparts they boasted about the security they had compared to women in other parts of the country. But a selected group of these women were being trained to become suicide bombers. The Tigers are reputed for using women suicide bombers, several top Sri Lankan political leaders and India's former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi were killed by Tiger female suicide bombers.
In times of conflict everyone in society suffers but women bear the added burden. Particularly in societies which face protracted conflicts the social breakdown is prolonged through many years. Violence becomes part of the very fabric of society it trickles down from state, to community to family. And as society struggles to cope with the everyday horrors of conflict, unfortunately, issues such as violence against women are less prioritised leaving millions of women alone and in danger.
Photo by Dr.S.Ali Wasif, shared under a Creative Commons license
