Army further accused of violating women’s rights in North-East

by admin
Jun 19, 2012
The Sri Lankan Army has rejected a statement from the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) which accuses it of breaking a UN convention on discrimination against women, released last week.

The statement from the ECCHR said that women in the North-East were subject to harassment and abuse from military and police personnel, who have a huge presence in the Tamil homeland.

The human rights group also criticised the country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act which they said,
“makes it easier for police and military members to carry out body inspections and ‘searches’ without having to justify doing so.

These searches are often carried out alongside sexual harassment and violence that is specifically of a sexual nature.”
Calling on the UN to conduct investigations into the conditions of the North-East, the ECCHER accused Sri Lanka of breaking the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), stating,
“Sri Lanka ratified this agreement and is thus currently disregarding the obligation it accepted  to fight any forms of discrimination and to ensure the effective prosecution of perpetrators of gender-based violence.
According to Colombo Gazette, Army Spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasuriya responded saying that these allegations had no police reports to back them and were “based on hearsay”.

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button