Women and Transitional Justice in Post War Sri Lanka

• In Event: Reckoning with State Crimes in South Asia

Abstract

In May 2009, Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war ended with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by state security forces. The end of war was an opportunity for Sri Lanka to address past human rights violations. Instead, it led to the resurgence of a triumphant Sinhala Buddhist nationalism accompanied by valorization of the military, the binary construction of ‘traitors’ and ‘patriots’, denial of human rights violations and the repression of demands for truth, justice and accountability. Tamils, combatants and civilians who died, and who were disappeared, tortured, and sexually abused became the ‘disavowed and ungrievable losses of the nation’.

One of the most significant challenges to the post-war Sri Lankan state in terms of truth and justice for past human rights violations, has come from Tamil women whose husbands, sons and brothers disappeared during the war. Reports based on survivor testimonies by Human Rights Watch (February 2013), the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, and the International Truth and Justice Project (March 2014 and August 2015) provide compelling evidence of sexual violence against women and men in detention as part of practices of torture during and also after the war. Drawing on scholarship on testimony and its potential to challenge impunity, as well as interviews with activists, this paper reflects on the relationship between testimony and accountability for human rights violations linked to the war in Sri Lanka.

Author

• Chulani Kodikara, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka