Women and Genocide – An assessment involving psychology, sex, violence, family and culture

Parani Krishnarajani  (The columnist is doing his research on violence unleashed on women and children in the aftermath of a war and its implication on genocide)

Women are the basis of the society. Their gift to sustain the ethnicity by propagation of offspring gives them this basis. So a sustained campaign to systematically target women has its genesis steeped in the background of a genocide ridden mind. This is the very reason women are increasingly made victims in the hands of perpetrators of this heinous crime.

The aftermath of May 18 has seen how our ethnic women have been subjected to the woes of economy and how they help steer their family in this background. The psychological issues they bring about along with the paradox of their sexuality are recipes of disaster. This brings about social degradation and disparity in the society, something that is keenly wanted by the establishment that is steeped in a mind-set of annihilating a race.

Women in the forefront of being subjected to genocide

We have been subjected to genocide and we are burdened to prove that. But that is the prerequisite the international law has laid down. This prerequisite is required to ascertain if the crimes perpetrated against an ethnic group by another distinct ethnic group or any official establishment acted on an intent that can be termed aptly as genocide.

The perpetration is often carried out in the guise of fighting either the militias or representatives of the ethnic group that has been subject to suppression.

The international community, including the UN that has been largely institutionalized, stand as mute spectators while the systematic ethnic cleansing is on, live and kicking. They never bother to ask the victims if the crimes perpetrated against them were with an intention to commit genocide on them. The international community prefers calling the systematic violence as human rights violation, or an unjust war or a little beyond, as war crimes. If they see that people were subject to intolerable oppression during the war, they would go to the length of classifying it as mere “crime against humanity”. The international community is hell bent not to use the term genocide unless the victims themselves go to every length to prove it.

As an ethnic group that is continually subject to the horrors of genocide, it is precisely at this point, our collective responsibility and our quest to find justice squarely meet. While we desperately make efforts to prove the “intention” of genocide, we surely shall also find a path to justice.

The latest report released by the International Truth and Justice Project under the leadership of Yasmin Sooka on the secret torture chambers of Sri Lanka assumes significance.

The statements and independent accounts of victims as found in the documents of this project neatly captures that what was perpetrated was not just crimes but a systematic genocide with a clear presence of a wanton intention.

Many activists are firm in their view and have been calling to treat sexual crimes perpetrated against women and children as intention to commit genocide. But the international body would only agree on this partially.

ITJP has clearly documented that the torture cells were not just places of sexual tortures but they were cells that had clear intention to commit genocide. The specific reports that women were isolated and tortured are proof enough to declare that the intentions of the Sri Lankan government were malicious and show signs of intention in every aspect to commit genocide.

These tortured women are later released into the society to live in a perpetual state of fear. It is quite easier to challenge and establish that these acts are with intention of genocide. As said earlier, women form the basis of an ethnic group. That is precisely why they are systematically and constantly targeted. These torture chambers run by the Sinhala establishment and the presence of women headed families in large number are proof enough of the intention of the establishment against the Tamils. Establishing this truth is the only way forward for us to get our justice that is long due. 

Destroying the familial set-up

The United Nations has declared May 15 as International Day of Families.

The United Nations, supposedly a world forum, unfortunately was hand-in-glove in the destruction of Eezham Tamils. The UN also went overboard by supporting the efforts of the demonic Sinhala establishment who were hell bent in destroying the familial set-up of Eezham Tamils.

The world body that celebrates International Day of Families on May 15^th went ahead and supported a regime that indulged in destroying the familial set up in the very middle of the same month. What an irony indeed!

The Sinhala establishment at Colombo continues its structural genocide in innovative ways and methods in Tamil Eezham. These methods are camouflaged tactically that none can recognize them as being part of intention to commit genocide. We found about 27 different versions of these camouflaged tactics.

The notion of destroying the familial set up was the central theme in all these 27 different tactics. By committing such horrendous acts, the Sinhala establishment has poised itself to give a final push to their only agenda of annihilating the Tamils from the island.

This establishment has opened possibilities of waging a war on ourselves.

You and me, we are the criminals in this set up. The criminal Sinhala establishment by opening the possibility of our men harming themselves neatly watches the proceedings with much fanfare.

The side-effects of the horrendous crimes of genocide committed and being committed continuously, and the basic survival issues that crops up after the war, gives rise to nearly 35 to 40 psychological issues among the victim race. The magnitude of horror faced by the victims is so wide.

Each of us, though live as Diaspora, are inflicted with a minimum of 10 psychological issues. Various external and internal conditions might influence the degree of the infliction of these psychological issues. But it is rather not possible to nod that there were no issues at all.

No amount of words can capture the magnitude of the horrendous genocide-ridden crime faced by the population of Vanni. It may also be wrong to begin such an exercise without knowing its full magnitude.

Should those down and out souls who believe that normalcy has returned to them get to read this amplified report, they may get into another psychological dilemma. The repercussions it might cause would be severe. That is exactly what is happening in Vanni right now.

The complications of life faced by every Eezham Tamil are no more private. After May 18, the complications are indeed something more of a common issue.

There is no open atmosphere to talk about the psychological issues. Yet there needs to be mechanism to address those issues. It is indeed frustrating to know the magnitude of the complexities though we understand the issues.

Women form the foundation of a society not just in a family but also in a race. This is the exact reason why genocidal regimes target women.

When we begin to react to the criminal intentions of the regime, the theories and solutions we put forward turned as ideologies that were backward and contrary to principles of women emancipation. When we observed this we did feel a sense of shock.

When our women started crossing Mullivaikkal on May 18^th, they literally began carrying the sins of this race. The cruel irony is, they are the target, of both, our adversaries and we.

When we were fighting for our rights, our women were more than equals in the battle field. But now we have entered a phase of treating them as “Women” of tradition. This war has made us blind and ruthless.

Mullivaikkal has opened new challenges for our women. Their rights have to be protected and at the same time, they are the beacon of hope for our race that struggles for mere existence. Everything is now on a knife-edge. We cannot afford to lose the challenge as it might bring multiple yet unknown issues to the front.

I did some research on the works of Simone de Beauvoir, a well-known feminist and activist, Amilcar Cabral, a rationalist and independence leader of Guinea-Bissau and the rational movements of EV Ramasamy of Tamil Nadu to postulate a theory against genocide.

I postulated and came up with this theory after putting it through the prisms of human relationship after genocide, spectacular failures of all the ‘isms” after a genocide, and women, their rights and feminism in the background of genocide.

I cannot vouch that the theory is the best – it can at best be called as being precautionary and temporary in nature. Nothing more!

The theory takes into account our women whose current status as widows and half-widows, and as physically challenged. It also takes into account gender bias they face in the wake of a systematic genocide.

A war of tradition has already erupted in the guise of divorces and obstacles to marriage after May 18. Hence it is imminent that we are not a robust society. Our fertility rate has almost dropped to zero. The rate at which we can have new offspring has dropped so significantly that we are facing a near extinction as a race.

Given this backdrop, it hence becomes imperative that education on sex and gender sensitivity is given top priority in the theory. Many innocent women being brandished as being whores and getting relegated as modern untouchables are terrible stories one gets to hear.

People like me who are able to make out the different dimensions of the issue, at times commit practical mistakes. May be it is time to acknowledge that we are victims of genocide too. It is imperative for men to change their attitude. And women should zealously safeguard themselves in this treacherous time. The issue too needs redress in different dimensions.

A redefinition of women rights is essential given the changed scenarios. It is because women are in the forefront of being subjected to systematic genocide. So safeguarding women takes precedence given the treacherous time we live in. Many definitions can be attributed to the word “safeguarding” in this context.

The best possible reaction we can offer against the systematic genocide that is going on is to safeguard the structure called “family”. Some might very well argue that this smacks of backwardness in thinking and goes against the very spirit of feminism as well.

But unfortunately our sustenance and identity breeds here. Only those who observe the nuances of genocide can very well understand how the government machinery has been overhauled to target the very structure of a family. This targeting is part of their well-planned systematic annihilation of the Tamil race.

After the direct assault on our race in 2009, a systematic targeting of family structure is followed currently. This was after they came targeting our widows and half-widows, the divorces they orchestrated, the obstacles they created for marriages and the unspoken misery they caused to families that had women as their heads.

This paves way to unhealthy economic conditions, psychological disasters and gender biases among our women. This in turn breeds immense social divide and a sense of disharmony in our race. This displays the whole world that we are not a healthy race by any means. Our fertility rate has almost dropped to zero and we are staring a near total annihilation.

The militants who lead our liberation struggle and the people who supported the mass movement are ironically unable to deal with their internal familial pressures. The perpetrators help those pressures grow to the point that the children of the family are made orphans and the members are left isolated.

Beyond the destructive plans of the sinister Government, our men and women, our soldiers, have all succumbed to failures and have been pushed to a future that looks bleak. That is the psychological injury the perpetrators have inflicted and the resulting failure is what has reflected in our society.

The outcome is their failure to forget mistakes and ignoring the noble virtue of being magnanimous among their family members. The disagreements have caused disastrous splits in their family and they have settled to live a desolate life characterised by a lack of vision for the future.

The bare truth is the fact that this status quo not only affects them individually but it pushes back every effort of the Tamils as a race to come out of the destructions faced in the aftermath of a systematic genocide unleashed against us.

I am not sure if the concerned people are aware or not aware of this status quo. So it is obligatory to not succumb to the pressure of disconnecting the familial chord come what may. A strong psychological wellbeing is the need of the hour.

Some of you might be surprised beyond a point. Let us ignore the general population in the statistics. Let us take the data among the militants who surrendered after May 18. Many families of the ex-militants got tangled in this emotional quagmire only to be pushed into familial disputes. The resulting lack of confidence has separated the members apart and destroyed the family set up. The data of families of ex-militants destroyed in this internal squabbling will be shocking.

This paves way to further isolate our women and hinder the proliferation of our generation. This is exactly why I express my opinion that some kind of psychological counselling mechanism has to be organized for the war affected. But many view this as something seriously wrong and this attitude needs to be addressed.

If we decide to react positively and firmly against the genocide unleashed on us, we need to cross the obstacles placed on marriages and we need to make our marriages work. Let us no more have widows and half-widows. Let us grow within us a quality to forgive mistakes among us and develop the noble virtue of being magnanimous to each other. Let us create families and let us make babies.

To put it in a different way, let us do away with the system of having a women-headed family. This will blow a death knell to the cruel efforts of the Sinhala establishment to annihilate our race.

Gender Based Violence

In the aftermath of May 18, hundreds of gender violence has been reported in our society. While some have come out in the open, many remain buried to this day. This is a planned assault on our existence.

Under the de facto Government of Tamil Eezham, our Tamil women enjoyed great deal of safety yet being liberal. They safeguarded our traditions and our traditional values with zeal. Those were dream days and now the entirety of our women folks are being used as a weapon for our enemy’s systematic annihilation by subjecting them to sexual assaults and violence.

The aftermath of a war inflicts a great deal of psychological wounds in the minds of the vanquished. The instance of the vanquished getting subjugated fully and coming under the governance of the victorious causes a great deal of emotional stress and suffering. No amount of words can describe the situation and feelings of the vanquished.

The steps implemented with sinister designs by the Sinhala Government are transforming the Tamils as a race with deep psychological scars. This is a well-entrenched plan of the establishment to annihilate us. The background of such gender violence and related crimes lies deep in the activities of the establishment.

One of the elements of a systematic genocide is to make a race intended to be annihilated as a perceived criminal race. The cold blooded murder of Vidhya and Saranya has to be seen in this light.

An establishment, after the war, that is hell bent in destroying the Tamils by using the tools of economy, culture, psychology and livelihood takes it up in the garb of providing development and reconciliation.

It is indeed a dangerous weapon that it can be safely concluded that none have escaped falling into its trap. When development is promised with no guarantee of safeguard to the language, race and its traditional homeland, and no guarantee that ensures fulfilment of individual’s basic needs and rehabilitation, it is actually a motive so invisible in its intention to annihilate the intended subjects. What seems to assure development is a well laid booby-trap aimed at deceiving the vanquished. Its sole aim is to churn out generations that will carry a sense of guilt and victimhood.

The incidence of murders, rapes, smugglings, thefts, clashes between armed gangs, and all such unlawful things reported in the Tamil homeland are part of this well-laid conspiracy.

During the days of Tigers, unlawful activities were virtually non-existent. The society was carrying the scars left by a war but it was more sophisticated on moral grounds. That moral ground is being targeted and smashed.

Whilst there is no bread to eat, the ruthless regime has ensured to open up avenues to kindle immoral feelings and emotions among people. That no doubt has contributed to juveniles actively engaging in sexual acts in the guise of love, they getting sexually harassed or harassing them to violently react when they perceive sex is not within their reach. All these immoral things point to a deep rot the establishment has succeeded in enforcing on our homeland and its people.

For a society that has no understanding on sexual issues and sexual education, it does not augur well when sexually explicit contents are exposed on them. The fact that the society was war-torn and carries the scar of the conflict, it is important to note that getting exposed to such brazen acts is unhealthy. It only helps breed criminals, like the Pungudutheevu criminals.

The Chengalladi and Achchuveli murders that happened because of family and love disputes were noted by me already. I observed that these happened in the background of the genocide and that justice needs to be served keeping the same in mind. But my observations were turned a blind eye by the politicians and the Tamil representatives leading to a continuum of such criminal incidents.

The society thus gets to be brandished as murderers and thieves. This is something the establishment with intent to commit genocide loves. This situation was systematically created by this regime. This is defined as systematic genocide. What happens now in our homeland can in no terms be defined as being rehabilitative. There is no development, there is no reconciliation. All that happens is nothing but a systematic annihilation.

The spate of deaths of Tamil women and the background of genocide in the making

After the 2009 war, the frequent mystery deaths occurring in Vanni, and particularly the deceased being women, is not unheard of. The mysterious death of hundreds of women militants further raises our doubt.

In the guise of natural deaths a systematic annihilation has been unleashed on our population and we seem to conveniently live in a denial mode.

The militants who were tortured and released in the name of rehabilitation carried the scar and were hence riddled with diseases in their final days. So was the plight of the displaced population of Vanni who had no food to eat during the final days of the war and had to sustain themselves with the meagre food they had. The brine water they had to subside upon had further taken a toll on their health. The influence of chemical weapons and the ammunitions on them further aggravated their health and had a telling effect on them leading to their slow dying.

Incidence of cancer and kidney malfunctioning were reported higher than normal. Cardiac related ailments and medical problems concerning the uterus were other problems reported. More important is the psychological issues faced by our people.

I just thought I will take this opportunity to put it on record the medical explanations offered on the deaths of our people post the 2009 carnage.

The inhuman usage of chemical weapons on our people has resulted in the depletion in the level of coenzyme-Q, a biochemical found naturally, in human bodies. The absence of this factor is proof enough, a living factor that can establish genocide, that our people have been subjected to ethnic cleansing.

When the level of coenzyme-Q depletes in the body, it can manifest as cancer and can cause several psychological issues to the subject. The other manifestations and side-effects include cardiac problems and medical problems to the uterus.

These medical issues can be resolved through consorted treatment procedures but it requires a certain financial muscle.

But for people who have lost their land and livelihood, and are in a great economic distress this is something that is not within their reach.

The scar the war has left, the resulting psychological stress they undergo, and their poor economic conditions have only made them resign to their fate. They no more have any resolve to pull themselves up.

So they have not shown any interest in getting themselves the medical attention they require. When the ailments grow stronger and their financial condition presses them harder, they get overwhelmed only to give up completely. This is the true background of many suicides reported among our people.

It is unimaginably cruel to think of a life ridden with disease and psychological stress, coupled with losing livelihood and getting into financial distress. This is the current state of affairs of our population in our homeland. The basis of any race is its women. That is why the regime is hell bent in destroying our women.

The many faces of genocide can be observed by the treatment our women receive. Encouraging them to lead a life of a widow or half-widow, subjecting them to involuntary castration, not providing apt medical treatment for those who are exposed to the dangers of chemical weapons, are all pointers to the systematic ways in which our women are subjected to annihilation.

When a woman dies, her children are orphaned. The continued status of half-widows has ensured persistent presence of psychological stress among them. The added burdens of having to facing gender bias and financial distress have meant that life has become a challenge for our women.

This has led to deterioration of social standards and also has led to greater economic disparity. The added misery of problems in the uterus, cancer, cardiac problems, and other medical issues affect their marriage or affect their ability to bear more children. This directly has a bearing on the fertility rate of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The future of a race depends on the robust fertility rate in a population. If a race has to survive, it needs to have a fertility ratio of more than 2:1. To be more explicit, a woman has to bear more than 2 children to keep the race intact without further decline.

A parent has to bear a minimum of three children. Only then the probability of two children reaching their adulthood and carrying on to increase the fertility is made possible. This then can translate to keeping the population of the race afloat without any decline.

But the systematic genocide tactics of the Sinhala establishment is hell bent in crushing that equation and would not oblige to increase the fertility of our race any further.

The critical truth is the entrapment of our women in their psychological issues after the carnage of May 18. Though each woman has encountered different suffering and the magnitude of their problems differ, they all seem to be well entrenched into some sort of a collective psychological depression.

Providing psychological counselling is something so common and is within anyone’s reach these days. A well thought out psychological counselling is an absolute necessity for people affected by war. It is indeed more relevant to women and children.

Psychological counselling getting branded as being mentally ill by some educated fools raises our concern. The attitude of such people discouraging women to partake any psychological counselling makes us sick.

This attitude smacks of supporting the malicious intentions of the regime. So the death of women in our society cannot be taken lightly.

For the victims who bore the brunt of war during the final phases of Vanni war, the Sinhala establishment did not care to provide any meaningful medical assistance to them. A generation has been affected by their callous attitude. All these need to be viewed from an angle of systematic annihilation of a race.

I have been vocal in my comments that this is an establishment that does not use its government machinery to the real cause of reconciliation but rather is hell bent on its intent to commit further genocide on us.

While the Tamil representatives set forth a motion for an international enquiry mechanism demanding justice, I also asked them to include conditions of making our people undergo independent medical examinations by international medical bodies or doctors. But my requests have never been heeded by our Tamil representatives till date.

If my representations would have been heeded, such international entities like Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors without Borders) would have been deployed for independent medical diagnosis of my people. Such a thing would have brought out the usage of chemical weapons on our people, the rapes that happened during and after the war, and the cruel acts of invalidating the mental health of ex-militants in the name of providing psychological counselling for them.

Those would have given enough proof to expose the true intention of the Sinhala establishment and castigate them further. Since that was a lost opportunity, the regime continues its evil deeds of subjecting the Tamils to annihilation with all its sugar-coated internal development programs.

So it is absolutely imperative that we do not take these issues, the death of many women, their diseases and their psychological issues, lightly without any regard.

Widows who lost their husbands in the war, the half-widows who do not know the whereabouts of their husbands, women who were rendered physically challenged due to the war, women who had to run the family because their husbands were rendered physically challenged in the war, women with their medical conditions and psychological issues, the condition of everyone is that of deep sorrow and anguish.

The sinister web woven by the regime prevents them to come out of this quagmire. They finally succumb battling for life due to their medical or psychological conditions. These are the precise reasons behind their untimely death. Intentions to brush aside allegations that the establishment was not involved in any annihilation are not true and are quite unfortunate.

Tamil Women in the Sinhalese Army – A theatrics in their systematic plan

The Sri Lankan armed forces had Sinhala women in its army. But they were not in any combat role. They were deployed for civilian duties only. Not much is known about the treatment of Sinhala women in the Sri Lankan army.

Many Sinhala rights activists and many intellectuals have recorded in detail the accounts of gender violence against the Sinhala women.

Many Sinhala women had to endure gender torture from their superiors in the army. Though the presence of gender violence is rampant in the armed forces of many world countries, the degree of such violence is excessive and unrestrained in Sri Lanka, and this fact is very well on record.

The Sinhala army unleashed a reign of terror on the Tamil women and children during the final stages of the war. The degree of violence let loose by them was unprecedented and that has been the unfortunate hallmark of the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Women not only get any combat roles in the Sri Lankan army but they also are not allowed to occupy any modest leadership positions in the army. The army of Sri Lanka smacks of male chauvinism in every sphere.

An armed force that has little regards to humanity and happily conducts itself like animals by unleashing a reign of terror can never be a right place to Tamil women. I can hardly imagine what treatment awaits them!

No wonder, the Sri Lankan army is marred with accusations of abetting suicides and inflicting psychological trauma on both civilians and its own forces. The war with Tamil Tigers helped the Sri Lankan army whitewash their criminal past.

When Sinhala women have met with such fate, what will be the fate of Tamil women who are anyways in their radar to be annihilated?

We can declare with resolve that the very idea of Tamil women in the Sri Lankan army is one of the ploys employed by the regime to unleash their annihilation tactics on the Tamils. I have already enlisted many reasons why the Sri Lankan army wanted to include the Tamil women. Here is the list once again.

• A ploy to display the world that they have inducted Tamils in their army.
• By not inducting women in their combat force, they can press these women in civilian jobs that can be subservient in nature. This can give out an image that the vanquished are now their servants.
• A sinister motive to utilize the Tamil women for their sexual desires and drives. To create a mixed generation whose identity of being a Tamil can be easily questioned.

The combat roles of Tamil women in the army of Tamil Tigers, their achievements, their valour, have all been recorded in history.

Our women fighters have scaled great heights and they have demonstrated their valour in the war that any Tamil blockbuster is yet to depict.

It is said that women are the strongest of the gender. But the male dominated world we live has relegated women by constantly depicting them as being weak.

But the great leadership quality of Pirabaharan ensured women scale greater heights in combat and warfare. He made them unleash their full potential and display their true valour.

These are instances of history that needs to be talked grand in the Tamils’ struggle. Hence the act of opening up the army to the Tamil women should be seen as an act to commit a cruel vengeance by our adversaries.

This is to plant a concocted story that the Tamils are a population that has been subjugated and have been enslaved for good. This act truly is intended to commit genocide on the Tamils.

This is just a ruse targeting our women. Hence to save the Tamil women who have joined the Sinhala army is another dimension of our struggle against the establishment that is hell bent in annihilating us.

Saving the Sinhala women also from the clutches of the ruthless Sri Lankan army is essential to bring dignity to women as a whole and restore confidence in everyone that humanity takes precedence over everything.

The Missing Persons Certificate

There are voices, many external and internal, that call for issuing certificates for missing persons. There is no clarity on how the certificate should be issued. Should it say that the concerned person has died or has just vanished?

Whatever it may be! How can a certificate play a role in bringing about solace to the victims? What kind of solution it offers to women who have been identified as half-widows?

What magic can a certificate for the missing person (It would be more appropriate to use the phrase “those who were made to miss”) do? The sad truth of what happened to them is what should be more relevant.

That can be a small start, an act that can provide small amount of justice to them. These half-widows can at the least get an opportunity to remarry.

The remarriage can serve as a small beacon of hope to get them out of the economic and social distress they are current in.

This is a classic example of external forces that have always been supportive of the Sinhala establishment, an establishment that is habituated to deny justice to the victims.

The Presidential commission did indeed notify that they would conduct a psychological counselling for family members who have missing persons. Later there were indeed few programs that did happen, albeit in a smaller scale.

After May 18, the “concentration camps” set up by the establishment in the garb of “rehabilitation”, and the activities they indulged in the name of giving psychological counselling are depressing stories filled with scar. Volumes of books are insufficient to record the happenings.

An awful trick in the name of psychological counselling was played to instil a sense of fear in the minds of the victims. The tricks were characterised by torture and brainwash.

The recent announcements and the steps to implement them are nothing but tactics that have its roots in the real intention of committing genocide against our people.

These activities of the establishment are a strategy to force our folks to abandon their quest to search their loved ones who went missing. It is to forcefully make them accept a Missing Person Certificate or get compensation and move on.

This is a well thought two-pronged strategy. It not only helps in the cover-up of the systematic genocide they inflicted on us but also to continue tactically the annihilation they planned.

Young women cannot continue to search for their missing husbands for years. That is practically impossible. Even though there exists proof that they have been killed in the war, they ask for confirming the same individually. But the Sinhala establishment refuses to acknowledge fearing global repercussions.

The targeting of women is the centre-stage of their annihilation principles and that happens unabated. How on Earth would they then publish the list of missing persons or the killed officially?

The story of a woman who requested the authorities to issue a death certificate needs mention here. The woman decided to move on and press for the death certificate considering the future of her kids.

The authorities happily sent her a death certificate mentioning that he had lost his life in the war. On May 17, 2009, the woman had seen her husband being reprimanded and taken away by the Sri Lankan army before her. But the death certificate mentioned that he was killed on April 24, 2009 by a shell attack. It never mentioned under whose shell attack the person got killed. The language mentioned in the death certificate was more inclined to castigate the Tigers.

How will a woman accept the cause of death to be because of shell attack when she has seen her husband being reprimanded by the Sri Lankan security forces with her naked eyes? It is impossible for any family member to accept these lies and keep a clear conscience.

That woman as a matter of fact could not remarry as truth has not emerged. The psychological stress as a result and the fact that she has children whose future are at stake increases the burden on that woman.

This is not a story of just one woman. Many thousand Tamil women are left to deal with similar stories in their life. Imagine the psychological, economic and cultural distresses such incidents can bring about.

This is the very reason I set forth to record my observations of gender biases and psychological issues our women face day in and day out. All I could say that this is the peak act of systematic genocide. The zenith of everything!

The background of genocide intent in family issues

Can a husband murdering his wife be termed genocide? This was one of the questions posed as I keep recording the deaths and its causes. This question was posed as a result of the incident in which 3 dead bodies were recovered from a well.

One of the dead bodies might have borne such evidence. But I can prove with evidence that this incident too could have happened with the establishment being the brain behind it. Since I am not in receipt of the details I could not comment further on this. But let me quote a similar incident.

In another instance, a body of a woman was recovered from a well. It was murmured that her husband had killed her and dumped the body in the well. There was some amount of truth in it…

A heated argument between the couple has resulted in the husband pushing his wife. That was a lethal push. The woman succumbed to her head injury and died on the spot. The general fear and the scar of fear in the heart and of the said husband’s mind following the war has made him susceptible like any other men. This fear made him to conceal the truth by dumping the body. After the truth was made known he was arrested and remanded to judicial proceedings by the establishment.

But why was there an argument in the first place between them?

It was poverty…..abject poverty….

But why did they fall into object poverty?

He was not employed….

Why was there no employment?

Their traditional occupation was agriculture and the land that provided his livelihood has been occupied by the occupying Sri Lankan army. There was no tilling of land and there was poverty henceforth.

There started a problem between the man and his wife who have been living in Vanni with the meagre resource they had. They were native of Palaly. Their land has been grabbed before 30 years. Then they had moved to Vanni to slowly reclaim what they have lost. But the war in 2009 was cruel to them. The establishment should have returned their land, either in Vanni or in Palaly. They got neither. How could they ever survive without land when they just knew to till their land?

This is tactical genocide in play. While the wife is dead, the husband gets to languish in the jail. Their children are now orphans. Some might want to believe that this was a family tiff but we should not. This is genocide in action, albeit differently.

Let us fully understand the gravity of truth before we narrate it to others. Else we will be pushed to the sorry state of giving reasons for our very own destruction.