Malathi de Alwis - US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, caused a furore in Sri Lanka recently when she noted that rape had been used as a tactic of war in "Bosnia, Burma, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere" while speaking on the unanimous adoption of the US-sponsored UN security council resolution 1888, which recognises sexual violence as exacerbating situations of armed conflict and impeding the restoration of international peace and security. The government of Sri Lanka immediately lodged a protest with the US embassy resulting in the state department issuing a "clarification" acknowledging that "in the most recent phase of the conflict, from 2006-2009 … we have not received reports that rape and sexual violence were used as tools of war". The government of Sri Lanka decided to accept this "gesture of goodwill" and to not "pursue this distasteful issue any further", while carefully ignoring additional inclusions in the statement that "numerous cases of rape and sexual violence in Sri Lanka, particularly acts committed against women held in detention by the government", have been detailed in the past.
Cynics might laugh it off as a storm in a tea cup – but this furore and its subsequent "resolution" raises a series of troubling issues. Undoubtedly, there is no evidence that the Sri Lankan armed forces have systematically used rape as a tactic of war – when soldiers rape en masse in order to terrorise, violate and humiliate the "other". Reports of sexual violence by members of the armed forces have also declined, this past decade. However, this does not negate the various forms of sexualised brutality which have been perpetrated on countless Tamil women and some Muslim women, by members of the Sri Lankan armed forces and police as well as the Indian Peace Keeping Forces, during this three-decade long civil war – Krishanthy Kumaraswamy, Murugesapillai Koneswary, Ida Carmelita and Rajini Velauthapillai head a long list of names of raped and murdered Tamil women publicised and protested by Sri Lankan feminists. Local activists in the north and east can match every rape that is reported with 10 others which have not been reported (if they live to tell the tale) out of shame or fear, or both. It is a "distasteful issue" that the Sri Lankan government, the armed forces, indeed all of us Sri Lankans, need to confront and condemn.
Militarised sexual violence in Sri Lanka has not been restricted to women from ethnic minorities or other marginalised groups, such as working class, lower caste or transgendered women. Innumerable sexual atrocities were committed against Sinhala women during two Sinhala youth insurrections in the south of the island and there are reports of soldiers beating and/or sexually abusing their wives, their lovers and sex workers during rest and recreation leave. While acknowledging the unrelenting struggle waged by a handful of feminists within the UN, as well as a myriad international feminist organisations and lobby groups to push the UN, to even condemn the resort to sexual violence in contexts of conflict, it is also important to recognise that such piecemeal resolutions – 1325, 1820 and now 1888 – do not adequately address the fact that militarism is inherently violent, patriarchal and masculinist, and intrinsic to the expansion of capitalism and imperialism. In other words, it is a legitimised form of structural violence that pervades our everyday, is dependent on particular gendered notions and practices and is not merely restricted to wars and conflicts. This is exemplified in the 1991 Tailhook scandal, where more than 80 US naval women officers were sexually harassed by US naval pilots while attending a two-day symposium at a Las Vegas hotel.
Addressing the militarisation and institutionalisation of sexual violence would enable a much broader and more comprehensive critique of state/counter-state paramilitaries while dis-enabling hypocritical stances adopted by the likes of Hillary Clinton, who is quick to point the finger elsewhere despite the US military being one of the worst perpetrators of sexual violence both within and without the US. It is time the US as well as the Sri Lankan government's acknowledge the culpability of its respective militaries, the "securing of peace" notwithstanding.
© Guardian
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