Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka | |
---|---|
Location | Sri Lanka |
Date | 1958–present |
Attack type | War rape, sex slavery, sexual abuse |
Perpetrator | Sri Lankan Armed Forces Indian Peace Keeping Force Sinhalese mobs Home guards Sri Lankan Police STF SIS TMVP |
Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. [1] This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women. [2]
Further rapes of Tamils were carried out by Sinhalese mobs during the 1977, 1981 and 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms. [3] [4] [5]
Following the outbreak of war, rape was used by the almost entirely Sinhalese Sri Lankan armed forces, [6] in an attempt to collectively punish the Tamil population, who were often seen as being supportive of the LTTE. [7] [8] [9] [note 1] Both Tamil females and males were targeted for rape, including children. [11] [12] [13] Other groups which committed rape against Tamils included the Indian Peace Keeping Force and Sri Lankan Police. [14] [15] [7]
The LTTE has been noted for its general lack of use of sexual violence, [16] [17] [18] though there have been isolated instances of rape of Tamils by LTTE members. Some LTTE members accused of rape faced execution from the leadership. [note 2]
Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who fled to India have also been victims of frequent rape and sex slavery by Indian security guards and intelligence police. [19]
Many rapes went unreported during the conflict due to various factors, including intimidation from the perpetrators, impunity for the crime, [note 3] [note 4] and the severe stigma attached to it in conservative Tamil society. [note 5] [23] [24]
Sex slavery and mass rape of Tamils by government forces peaked at the end of the war in 2009, and persisted in the post-war era, with human rights groups describing it as 'systematic'. [note 6] [26]
Government forces consistently deny all the charges of mass rape, with one senior army official saying the following in 2010:
"Throughout their training, our boys are taught to hate the Tigers, they see them as disgusting animals, not fit to live. I am 200 per cent sure that they didn't rape Tamil women. Why would they fuck them if they hate them so much?" [27]
In May 1958 following tensions arising from the Sinhala Only Act, the abrogation of the Banda-Chelva pact and continuing Tamil protests against discrimination, an island-wide pogrom was unleashed against Tamils by organized Sinhala mobs. [1]
Sinhala journalist Tarzie Vittachi recounts the frequent use of rape by these mobs in his book "Emergency '58", where he describes a Sinhala 'Hamudawa' (army) composed of Sinhala laborers from various state departments and farms, who went on the rampage raping, looting and beating up hundreds of Tamils. [1] One account of rape recounted by Vittachi describes a Tamil officer who became mentally unstable as a result of being unable to defend his wife and daughter from the sexual assault:
"Another Tamil officer working in the same Government department was not so fortunate. The thugs stormed into his house and assaulted his wife and grown-up daughter in the presence of his little child. His mind cracked under the shock." [1]
Following the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom, the Ceylon government sent the military to the north under emergency rule, which enabled them to "operate brutally with impunity". [2]
According to Professor Neil DeVotta, Tamils were subsequently "ordered about and searched in a humiliating fashion" by soldiers, as well as being beaten or stoned by soldiers in passing military vehicles. Tamil women were also occasionally raped by the army, particularly when the soldiers were drunk on toddy. [2] [28]
In response to Tamils voting for a party that espoused Tamil independence, state forces orchestrated another violent pogrom on Tamils in 1977. Hundreds of Tamils were killed and raped throughout the island. The following Tamil victims of rape are from the Sansoni commission report of 1980: [3]
In a letter addressed to President J. R. Jayewardene, the leader of the main Tamil party, A. Amirthalingam accused Sinhala hoodlums of raping around 200 women during the 1977 pogrom. [29] His wife Mangayarkarasi Amirthalingam emotionally recounted some incidents of rape that occurred during the 1977 pogrom and said "Tamil women could not walk the streets during nights in safety." [30]
In 1981 members of the ruling United National Party organized another pogrom against the Tamils. [4] In the London Observer of 20 September 1981, Brian Eads reported that "25 people died, scores of women were gang raped, and thousands were made homeless, losing all their meagre belongings". [4]
Black July 1983 was the largest pogrom orchestrated by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamils. Up to 3000 Tamils were massacred in cold blood throughout the island. Countless women were raped with impunity.
Prior to the pogrom during the week of 18 July 1983, three Tamil schoolgirls were raped by Sinhalese soldiers in Jaffna, following which one of victims committed suicide. [31]
The following accounts of rape occurred during the pogrom:
Full-scale war broke out between the Sri Lankan Army and Tamil militant groups after Black July 1983. The Sri Lankan armed forces resorted to punitive mass rape of thousands of Tamil women in the North-East during the civil war. [35]
"Our Tamil armed group brothers of freedom fighters who helped the army watched us being sexually assaulted; but some I saw had tears in their eyes as their hands are tied. The army did not even leave me as a 13 years old or my sister who is 6 years old. My sisters' bodies got frozen and never talk about any thing. Our mothers told us not to say any thing to our neighbors or the world as she did not trust the world and worried that our future will be destroyed as we were told. One day a sister from our neighborhood committed suicide. We asked what happened, the parents kept quiet. Later my mother told me that she was raped and killed herself as she does not want to see this terrifying world." [59]
From October 1987, the IPKF commenced war on the LTTE in order to disarm them. During this conflict, the IPKF raped thousands of Tamil women. [35] One IPKF official excused these rapes by stating the following:
"I agree that rape is a heinous crime. But my dear, all wars have them. There are psychological reasons for them such as battle fatigue." [24]
"One day I was asked to bring a mammoty [type of spade] by Captain Lalith Hewa. When I took it to him he was with a woman who had no clothes on. This woman and her husband were brought to the camp earlier that day. Lalith Hewa had raped the woman and later attacked her and her husband with the mammoty I brought to him. Both of them died. Lalith Hewa tried to bury them there himself but he couldn't do it. Then the bodies were brought to Chemmani. I can show you where the bodies were buried."
"Sri Lankan soldiers have raped both women and young girls on a massive scale, and often with impunity, since reporting often leads to reprisals against the victims and their families.." [126]
"The one who had brought us there came up to me and the other soldier went up to the other girl...we started screaming. The one with me stuffed a handkerchief into my mouth and began fondling and cuddling me. He touched and squeezed my breasts. He sucked my cheek. ... We were behind a bush. I tried to push him away but he pulled and tore my blouse. Then he pulled my bra off. He removed his trousers. He took off my knickers. Then he was naked and he did everything he had to do to me. It was too painful to me. He raped me. The whole ordeal lasted about 1/2 hour." [127]
"Sri Lankan security forces are using systematic rape and murder of Tamil women to subjugate the Tamil population... Impunity continues to reign as rape is used as a weapon of war in Sri Lanka." [25]
"Two persons who were armed and in their uniform entered the house saying that they wanted to search the house. They talked in Sinhala language. At that time I was all alone at home, as my parents had gone to one of our relatives' house which is at a distance away from our home. While talking with me, one of the men who had come forcefully dragged me and committed the crime by force." [159]
"Everybody knew that when he [KK] takes someone out of the cell, he will rape them." [195]
About 300,000 Tamil civilians displaced in the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War were detained by the Sri Lankan security forces in several camps in Vavuniya District, known by the generic name "Manik Farm", which was then the largest refugee camp in the world. The camps were known for their poor conditions and incidents of sexual violence by the Sri Lankan security forces. [197]
I was totally naked. I felt pain in my body. I did not know what I should do so I screamed. The man standing beside me reached down and placed his hand over my mouth. I was helpless. I was crying and I could not even cry for help. He told me to shut up. He used bad words and said that “if you scream again we will kill you”. He said that I was not to tell anyone of my interrogation and if I did they would “kill me in the night”. He said that they won the war and they wanted Tamil women to bear Sinhala children. They gave me my clothes. They watched me dress. They were still in a happy mood. I do not know the names of the four army officers who raped me. I never saw them again after the day they raped me. [198]
"You are so fit, you must be a Tiger."
"They don't allow you to have sex, no wonder you're so hungry for it." [27]
"All the time that we walked the soldiers were talking about us, saying, "These girls are ideal to satisfy our needs." They spoke in broken Tamil because they wanted us to know what they were up to and to frighten us," [207]
"I saw one girl going away and then heard screaming. I feared she had been raped behind the sentry post. I just kept on walking and didn't look because I was so scared. She was about eighteen or nineteen years old. I saw her taken out of the line in front of me and step through the barbed wire and be led away. I was afraid to turn back and look in case they saw me but when the path turned a corner I could see the girl behind the sentry post, crying, half naked, with all her clothes badly ripped. It was dreadful. I was very angry and disappointed. I felt helpless and afraid but I had to survive myself. Then in the shed where we were searched, another person asked if I'd also seen all the girls being taken away and raped." [207]
"I was transferred to the Batticaloa army camp where I was treated like a slave. I was made to clean and do all the chores and treated very badly. I was kept in this army detention for nearly five months." [208]
"One elderly mother was crying inside the camp. I asked why. She said they'd taken her daughter away and she hadn't heard from her at all. There are many people taken from the camps that go missing. The women are sexually abused. Nobody dares to talk. They know they're being watched. They're afraid they'll go missing."
"One evening when I was returning after a bath with some others, suddenly a group of soldiers appeared. Some of the girls managed to scream and run away. I was raped." [212]
"When they were at the hospital, one day I saw a group of six soldiers raping a young Tamil girl. I saw this with my own eyes."
"They shoot people at random, stab people, rape them, cut their tongues out, cut women's breasts off. I have witnessed all this with my own eyes.
I saw a lot of small children, who were so innocent, getting killed in large numbers. A large number of elders were also killed.
If they wanted to rape a Tamil girl, they could just beat her and do it. If her parents tried to stop them, they could beat them or kill them. It was their empire.
I saw the naked dead bodies of women without heads and other parts of their bodies. I saw a mother and child dead and the child's body was without its head." [225]
"The Channel 4 video and photographs of what appear to be dead female cadre, including video footage in which the naked bodies of women are deliberately exposed, accompanied by lurid comments by SLA soldiers, raising a strong inference that rape or sexual violence may have occurred prior to or after execution." [227]
"The girls usually didn't talk back to them, because they knew that in the camp if they talked anything could happen to them. It was quite open, everyone could see the military officers touching the girls," [233]
"They beat me, pulled my hair, and banged my head on a wall. They beat me with their hands and kicked me with their boots. One of the soldiers said, "We will teach you a lesson." I lost consciousness that day and when I came to, I realized I had been raped. Then more soldiers came and raped me. This went on for many days. I can’t remember how many times and how many soldiers raped me." [242]
"you are getting out, this is what you deserve." [243]
"On examination there were multiple simple linear abrasions over lower and upper limbs and face. Both breasts showed multiple contusions and bite marks and were very tender. The genitalia showed the vulva to be oedematous (swollen). Both labia majora (the external female genitalia) were swollen. Speculum examination showed an active bleeding site about 3cm in the vaginal vault." [243]
"They were like animals. I was crying. At that time I was forty days pregnant and I started to bleed, having a miscarriage." [244]
"In front of our own eyes, and inside our premises, the army was touching a young girl…so what would happen if we are also not there" [245]
"During the first interrogation, the official in military fatigues forced me to undress. He tried to have oral sex with me. He forced himself on me and raped me. During questioning, the officials would squeeze my penis. They would force me to masturbate them. One of them masturbated me. I was severely tortured when I resisted. The officials would furiously say some words in Sinhala when they sexually abused me." [256]
"The labour force generally stays near the site next to the (Tamil) villages and has proven to be a threat of molestation and harassment to local (Tamil) women and girls. Reports also indicate that when such complaints of harassment and molestation are made the complainants are often threatened and sometimes abused by the military personnel concerned. There are also reports of complaints to the police being generally met with inaction when the alleged perpetrators are either security forces or labourers or workmen from the South." [257]
"I have a terrible fear when I hear the word "army". We always feel under threat. We are afraid even to talk about it." [266]
"When the lady left and that man closed the door, I knew what was going to happen. They raped me." [26]
"They would put my testicles in the drawer and slam the drawer shut. Sometimes I became unconscious. Then they would bring someone and force me to have oral sex with him. Sometimes if we lost consciousness during the torture they would urinate on us," [26]
"There is such a systematic set-up in Sri Lanka, whereby it's absolutely clear to me… that detention and torture is going on in a very large scale and that it's done in a very similar way every time." [26]
"Make sure you do a good job. Our boss Gota told us not to spare them. Make sure that this man is brought back tomorrow since there will be two other Officers who will 'want to have a go.' " [226]
"Their minds are dead. They don't even know how to ask for food. Some of us feel sorry for them. We take food to them. We are scared when we do it. If the security guards see us, they say 'Do you want to sleep with us as well?' Those men still visit them to satisfy their sexual needs. They hold their hair and hit them. When I look at this I can't stand it. When our children are out, they come to us and say 'come and sleep with us or we will claim you're a Tamil Tiger'."
"... She was taken by a guard at night to a 'questioning room' where several male uniformed officers were waiting, faces partially obscured. They sexually molested, bound and blindfolded her, drugged her, then each raped her in turn." [298]
"... During the night army men came into her cell. One man stood watching at the door while the other raped her, and then they swapped so that the second man raped her too. The next night other men came to her cell. These men raped her vaginally and then anally. On both nights she recalls that the men had been drinking alcohol. On the second night she remembers one man holding her legs down and another burning her with cigarettes. She was bitten by her assailants and scratched with their nails." [298]
"... In the afternoon two men came into the room. Both men took it in turns to make him take their penis in his mouth and then took it in turns to anally rape him. Throughout this time they were swearing at him and calling him filthy names. They held a gun to his head some of the time and also hit him with the handle of the gun. After he had been raped several times he was left alone in the room with no clothes on. He was kept naked for the rest of the time until he was released." [297]
"... He was ordered to remove all his clothes, and was interrogated and beaten for several hours. During this time a length of twine was twisted around his penis, causing excruciating pain." [299]
"... His penis was crushed in a drawer that was slowly closed in order to induce a confession. They were laughing when they were inflicting the injury." [299]
"...With his hands tied a two inch nail was forced into his urethra and rotated causing pain, some bleeding and discomfort on passing urine for many days." [299]
"He forced his penis in my mouth and moved it in and out like masturbating and ejaculated all over my face and left. The guard kicked the metal door all night and kept yelling ‘Kotiya’. This same conduct occurred every night thereafter. The two guards anally raped me on every occasion they abused me, which was every day." [300]
"Later that night an army woman came...She removed my clothes. I was crying. They were looking at my body and laughing at me saying things in Sinhalese. I was trying to push the woman away and she said "oossh, oossh" and started slapping me…the woman said something to the man and she left the room. He came up to me and tried to pull my bra and panties off…He grabbed my hair and was slapping me and saying something in Sinhalese…I remember laying on the floor on my back and in a daze trying to get up but being held down by hands on my arms pinning them to the floor." [301]
"The levels of sexual abuse being perpetuated in Sri Lanka by authorities are the most egregious and perverted that I've ever seen." [302]
"They heated up iron rods and burned my back with stripes. On another occasion, they put chili powder in a bag and put the bag over my head until I passed out. They … raped me." [302]
"The number of referrals we're seeing is not dropping off since the conflict. Political rhetoric about Sri Lanka being a different place, and EU trade relations being re-established due to improvements in the human rights situation, is not consistent with what we're seeing." [302]
"In detention they experienced brutal torture at the hands of the security forces, such as whipping of the soles of the feet, blows to sexual organs, cigarette burns, branding with a heated metal rod, water torture, asphyxiation, suspension in stress positions, mock executions and death threats, as well as rape, including gang rape." [307]
"You Tamil dog, you are an arrogant Tamil dog, whatever we do to you, no one is going to ask about it."
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. It was formed under the mandate of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord that aimed to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military.
Krishanti Kumaraswamy, also spelled Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, was a Tamil woman in Sri Lanka who was raped and murdered on 7 September 1996 by six Sri Lankan Army soldiers; the effort to bring her assailants to justice became a cause célèbre as a part of the protest against atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan Army during the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Black July was an anti-Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army patrol by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 July 1983, which killed 13 soldiers. Although initially orchestrated by members of the ruling UNP, the pogrom soon escalated into mass violence with significant public participation.
Human rights in Sri Lanka provides for fundamental rights in the country. The Sri Lanka Constitution states that every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. And, that every person is equal before the law.
The 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka followed the 1977 general elections in Sri Lanka where the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalistic Tamil United Liberation Front won a plurality of minority Sri Lankan Tamil votes. In the elections, the party stood for secession. An official government estimate put the death toll at 125, whereas other sources estimate that around 300 Tamils were killed by Sinhalese mobs. Human rights groups, such as the UTHR-J, accused the newly elected UNP-led government of orchestrating the violence.
The Vankalai massacre was a massacre of a family of four minority Sri Lankan Tamils at the hands of the Sri Lankan military personnel from the village of Vankalai in Mannar District, Sri Lanka on June 8, 2006. The victims were tortured and the mother was gang raped before her murder.
The Massacre at Thandikulam is a disputed event which occurred during Sri Lankan Civil War. It took place on 19 November 2006 when suspected LTTE carders exploded an Improvised explosive device targeting a military truck killing five Sri Lanka Army soldiers. Five students of the Thandikulam Agriculture Farm School were also killed in either the explosion or the subsequent gunfight that followed. As of June 2007, investigations are ongoing to ascertain the cause of their deaths.
The Kent and Dollar Farm massacres were the first massacres of Sinhalese civilians carried out by the LTTE during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The massacres took place on 30 November 1984, in two tiny farming villages in the Mullaitivu district in north-eastern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government labeled this as an attack on civilians by the LTTE.
Operation Pawan was the code name assigned to the operation by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to take control of Jaffna from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, in late 1987 to enforce the disarmament of the LTTE as a part of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. In brutal fighting lasting about three weeks, the IPKF took control of the Jaffna Peninsula from the LTTE, something that the Sri Lankan Army had tried but failed to do. Supported by Indian Army tanks, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, the IPKF routed the LTTE at the cost of 214 soldiers and officers.
Eelam War I is the name given to the initial phase of the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.
Eelam War II is the name given to the second phase of armed conflict between Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The war started after the failure of peace talks between the Premadasa government and the LTTE. This phase of the war was initiated by the LTTE who massacred almost 600 Sinhalese and Muslim police personnel after they were ordered by the Premadasa government to surrender to the LTTE. The truce was broken on June 10, 1990, when the LTTE in October expelled all the 28,000 Muslims residing in Jaffna.
Sarathambal Saravanbavananthatkurukal or better known as Sarathambal was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was gang raped and killed on 28 December 1999. This became an internationally known incident of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Eelam War III is the name given to the third phase of armed conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Murugesapillai Koneswary or Koneswary Murugesapillai was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman who was raped and killed on 17 May 1997 as part of the ongoing Sri Lankan civil war. The rape and murder received extensive local and international attention.
Shoba, also known as Shobana Dharmaraja, was a Sri Lankan Tamil journalist and television broadcaster for the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). She died in the final days of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 with video evidence that she was captured by the Sri Lankan military before being raped, tortured and murdered. A senior United Nations official deemed the footage to be authentic. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also verified that it was her.
The 1985 Trincomalee massacres refers to a series of mass murder of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese home guards in Trincomalee District, Sri Lanka. In a succession of events that spanned over two months, hundreds of Tamil civilians were massacred and thousands were driven out by the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese mobs in order to colonize the area. Almost every Tamil settlement in the district was destroyed during this well-orchestrated campaign to drive out the local Tamil population. Several Tamil women were also raped. In September 1985, the entire Tamil population of Trincomalee town was displaced to forests and refugee camps in an attack that wiped out the town, including the destruction of 12 temples and a mosque. Since August 16, over 50,000 Tamils who were forced to flee the town ended up in refugee camps in the Jaffna and Batticaloa districts.
The Manal Aru massacres of 1984 refers to a series of massacres of Sri Lankan Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military across numerous traditional Tamil villages in the Manal Aru region which spans across the Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts. The motive behind the massacres was to drive out the local Tamil population from their villages, in order to replace them with thousands of Sinhala settlers.
The 1985 Vavuniya massacre refers to the mass murder of over 200 Tamil civilians in the Vavuniya District of northern Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Army between 16 and 18 August 1985 during the first phase of the Sri Lankan civil war. The massacre led to the collapse of the second phase of the peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil delegation held at Thimphu. It was described as among the "worst anti-Tamil pogroms".
The Veeramunai massacres refers to the mass killing and disappearances of over 250 Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan security forces and Muslim home guards in 1990.
OISL did not find any information to suggest that the LTTE was responsible for sexual violence, and different sources indicated that anyone found responsible for sexual abuse or violence risked harsh punishment by the LTTE.
Even though the origins of the 1983 riots were widely attributed to the killing of 13 Sinhalese soldiers by Tamil rebels, many Tamils point out that it was the abduction and rape—by government forces—of three Tamil schoolgirls that led Tamil rebels to attack government forces. This incident took place in Jaffna during the week of July 18, 1983, following which one of the victims committed suicide.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)