Today Vithiya Sivaloganadan: Who’s next?
The title of this post is the title of a poem written by Shamila Daluwatta, a vocal activist for the rights of women and girls in Sri Lanka. The horrific news from the North of another gang rape in just three months, has forced us once again to review who we are as a people. The gang rape in Mannar in March was contested, the evidence was questioned, even by rights activists in Colombo, perhaps seeking to ensure that if such horrible happenings do occur, we need more than hearsay. A grandmother’s anguish was insufficient. Now? Would we deny this too? Is the pain on the streets yesterday also staged or somehow untrue? What of the response on social media to “Tamils protesting”, with the fear mongering of war and conflict on the lips not just of ousted politicians, but also the obvious nationalist elements that still view everyone but the Sinhalese as the other. So blinded by bigotry and political expediency there was little thought spared for the girl, the daughter, the young woman on the threshold of possibility. Now dead. No more. Ashes and dust.
“According to reports, her hands and legs had been tied and a rag had been stuffed into her mouth before she died.” – Al Jazeera
How can such inhumanity be possible? This question has challenged us over and over and over again in Sri Lanka. Yet, it’s a pathetic rhetorical question. One that has so many possible answers, that it remains unanswered by those very possibilities. Anthropology, sociology, psychology, any behavioral science that tries to explain it, including the blame of Gang Rape Porn on the internet, still struggles to answer the whys and hows of such cruelty and suffering. Perhaps we’re afraid to truly comprehend what is possible. Perhaps we see ourselves not just in the victims but also in the perpetrators. Perhaps not understanding it is our simplest defense. Is our confusion and disgust and helplessness the very facade we need to stay ensconced in the safe spaces we’ve created for ourselves, free from the brutal reality that can be, and is? Are we overcome with shame at our inability to act, or do we cling desperately to empathy, so that we don’t need to go any further?
We have to echo Jaffna’s cries for justice. We have to stand together, once again, even as we did in January, to confront evil and hatred. There is no us and them. There never was an us and them. All there is, is who we are, and this more than ever is a test of our metal as a people. Justice. We demand it. Justice. We deserve it. Justice. It is our right.
Today Vithiya Sivaloganadan: Who’s next?
First they raped Manamperi
And buried her body alive
I did not speak
Because there was an insurrection
Then they came for women in Kahawatte
I did not speak
Because I was not from Kahawatte
Then they came for women in Nuriwatte
I did not speak
Because I did not live in Nuriwatta
Then, they came for Women in the North
I did not speak, because
Krishanthi Kumaraswami, koneshwari, Isaipriya
They were not my sisters
Then they came for women with a different skin colour
Eight men gang-raped Victoria Alexandra
I did not speak
Because she was just a foreigner
Then they gruesomely gang-raped Rita John
Stabbed her body fifteen times
Left her murdered body on the Modera beach
I did not speak
Because she was an Indian
She was asking for trouble
By walking on the beach
with her jewelries in the evening
Then they gang raped a woman in Wijerama
I did not speak
Because she was just a prostitute
Then they raped hundreds of virgins
And celebrated with champagne
in Akurassa and Monaragala
I did not speak
Because too scared of politicians
Then they raped Logarani
Threw her naked body into a sacred temple
Then they gang raped Saranya Selvarasa
I did not speak
Finally they raped
Vithiya Sivaloganadan
I did not speak
Because she is Tamil
She lived on a small Island in Kytes
By Shamila Daluwatte, shamiladaluwatte@gmail.com
I feel guilty too. I did not speak out. Being comfortable in a free and democratic society for the past twelve years in the UK. Perhaps I have now given up after being part of the suffering.
I cannot now keep quiet. Reading through your post, just stirs the anger within me against the perpetrators of these brutal acts. Thank you for bringing me out of my comfort and selfish zone.
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