Sexual violence committed against Eezham Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Vanni is on the increase in the recent months, reliable civil sources told TamilNet. Personnel in military vehicles and auto rickshaws parked under the trees away from the roadside in Ki’linochchi commit sexual violence to girls forcefully brought from the resettled villages and sometimes even to girls passing by on the road, by grabbing them into the vehicles. The wails of the victims are commonly heard, but people are unable to do anything about it, the civil sources further said. The violence is systematically committed with genocidal mentality and soon by replacing the civil administration of Ki’linochchi entirely by the Sinhalese, all protests will be silenced, the sources added.
In the meantime, a military backed or military participated racket of bringing Tamil girls from the North and East for running brothels in the south has also been reported in several instances, but civil society workers are unable to come out with presentable evidences.
Recently, Fort Police in Colombo took into custody two Tamil girls from Vanni, after a ‘broker’ who had brought them to Colombo with promises of employment had abandoned them. A lawyer, contacted by the police, handed over the girls to their family. Incidents like these often go unreported, civil sources in Colombo said.
In January 2011, Women’s Development Centre, Jaffna, and Paalnilai Chamaththuva Amaippu (Gender Equality Group), cautioned residents in the North to be aware of employment offers targeting women are being made without any guarantees of transparency or contracts. The caution came after SL Army commanders in North were engaged in campaigning among the rural populations in the North that they were offering employment to Tamil women in the garments industry in the South.
In the meantime, National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) Chairperson Anoma Dissanayake in Colombo has come with an official acknowledgement of the crime for the first time.
On Sunday, the Sunday Times and Virakesari newspaper in Colombo have come out detailed reports on a sexual racket that exploited Eezham Tamil girls Vanni and East .
The racket was brought to the notice to the NCPA through the police after a 16-year-old Tamil girl from Mullaiththeevu, who ran away from the National Hospital in Colombo, where she was warded for an operation to prevent pregnancy, revealed the details.
“Based on the information provided by the runaway girl, police raided a brothel in Maradana and found eight girls between the ages of 16 and 24 being used as prostitutes,” The Sunday Times reported citing the NCPA president.
A midwife of the Colombo National Hospital had been looking after the girls in the brothel. “She was in charge of giving them contraceptives and looking into their medical needs. She had the assistance of a doctor as well,” Ms. Dissanayake told paper.
Of the nine girls in custody, six are from North and one from East. At least one of them was brought from the barbed-wire internment camp in Vavuniyaa. Two of the victims are underaged girls.
Meanwhile, Virakesari Tamil daily reported that two of the victims were found afflicted by Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Killing large number of men and exploiting women of a nation is an age-old tactic of carrying out genocide. The genocide in the so-called post-war period is more nuanced and pathetic than the earlier one, civil society workers said.
Greedy establishments of many countries, now rush to Colombo, singing the song ‘the war is over’. Even a country like Vietnam that has seen the worst of such violence is not an exception, the civil society workers further said.
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