| | | | | Sonia Sarkar in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, and New Delhi @sonia_26 |
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| When Malathy returned home in 2009 after serving more than a decade with the Tamil rebel group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), she was expecting her family would embrace her with open arms. Instead, they were embarrassed by her homecoming. “Initially, for several months, my family didn’t allow me to step out of home and talk to locals,” Malathy, a resident of Kilinochchi, a town about 37 miles from Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, told OZY. “They even blamed my previous association with the LTTE for the rejections that my younger sister faced in matchmaking.” Malathy, who asked to be identified only by her first name, had served in the LTTE since she was just 16 years old. She and her family are of Tamil ethnicity, which means they are minorities in Sinhalese-majority Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese held high-ranking roles during colonial rule, and the Tamil people have faced discrimination from their government ever since the island nation gained independence from the British in 1948. The post-colonial years saw anti-Tamil pogroms that led a group of Tamil revolutionaries to found the LTTE in 1976, with the goal of creating a separate sovereign state called Tamil Eelam. In 1983, a civil war erupted between the LTTE and the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan army. That war lasted 26 years. | | Malathy and many other women of the LTTE felt powerful during the years they spent with AK-47s and T56s hanging around their shoulders. | | Women like Malathy made up as much as one-third of the LTTE forces, which enlisted thousands of children as well as women into its ranks and used many of them as human shields. At least 40% of the LTTE’s suicide attacks were carried out by women combatants, with rebel leaders instructing women to hide explosives in their undergarments and then infiltrate high-security zones. (The FBI has credited the LTTE with pioneering the modern suicide belt and the use of women in suicide attacks.) Sri Lanka has lately seen renewed upheaval following the economic collapse that led to the ouster of its president last July. Notably, amid recent street demonstrations, protesters in the capital city of Colombo openly mourned Tamil casualties from the civil war. That civil war killed more than 100,000 people, maimed over 110,000 and left thousands of LTTE cadres — including women like Malathy — in a terrible lurch. |
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| Malathy and many other women of the LTTE felt powerful during the years they spent with AK-47s and T56s hanging around their shoulders. Although Malathy served primarily in the LTTE’s communications arm, she went through rigorous training that included practice with martial arts and firearms, as well as other military exercises. She even wore the LTTE trademark cyanide capsule around her neck, to swallow in case she was captured. That’s in stark contrast to her post-war life, in which she resides with a family that’s embarrassed of her association with the LTTE, in a village where police officers and military servicemen monitor her whereabouts and interrogate her about her past. (Although the Sri Lankan army eliminated the Tamil guerrillas 13 years ago, some former combatants have been arrested and intimidated amid allegations of regrouping themselves for future attacks.) | | These women were considered “brave” and “powerful” in Sri Lankan society when they carried arms, whereas they are now “looked down upon.” | | “My life at home is no less than an exile, it was much better in the jungles,” said Malathy. She is one of many women who served the LTTE and are now searching for acceptance and a new role in Sri Lankan society — and even within their own families. Human rights activist Ambika Satkunanathan has pointed out that the inclusion of women in the LTTE was “strategic,” and “driven by military needs,” and not done with the aim of addressing gender inequality. Kilinochchi-based activist Sathiyamoorthy Lalitha Kumari, who works for the rehabilitation of women war victims, said that these women were considered “brave” and “powerful” in Sri Lankan society when they carried arms, whereas they are now “looked down upon.” Strictly defined domestic roles were, in part, what Tamil women hoped to escape nearly four decades ago when they joined the LTTE. Kumari said women were attracted to the LTTE for its promise to abolish caste discrimination and feudal customs such as the dowry system, and usher in social, political and economic equality. Like male combatants, many women believed the onus was on them to fight the repression of Tamils in Sinhalese-majority Sri Lanka, said Kumari. Also, while some women joined the LTTE to escape sexual harassment or rape by Sri Lankan soldiers, there were others forcefully recruited by the rebels. But female combatants have been ostracized in their return to “normalcy,” even if most Tamil people once supported the rebel group, said Christine Sixta Rinehart, professor of political science at the University of South Carolina Palmetto College. Rinehart, who has studied the LTTE movement, told OZY that patriarchal societies like the one in Sri Lanka are “not yet ready” to see women outside of traditional gender norms. “Physically strong women, who once used weaponry and challenged gender roles by taking a more masculine persona, are difficult for these societies to accept,” said Rinehart. Although women played an active role in the Tamil nationalist struggle, there was no fundamental change in gender roles within the Tamil community, said Satkunanathan. Discriminatory practices simply reemerged when the armed conflict ceased. |
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| The Sri Lankan government claimed to rehabilitate 12,000 LTTE militants between 2009 and 2012, in an effort to reintegrate them into society. In the case of women, that effort was geared toward making the ex-combatants more “feminine” by training them as makeup artists, seamstresses and nursery school teachers. Today, Malathy works at a local grocery shop. She tried but failed to borrow a sum of 500,000 Sri Lankan rupees, or about $1,360, to establish a photography studio. It would have been a rare studio run by a woman in her village, Malathy said. She dreamt of using her photography skills, which she honed during her LTTE days, to become financially independent, and she had hoped to train local girls in photography as well. | | People don’t think we deserve to be part of the society. - Kilinochchi resident Malathy | | A former combatant who asked to be referred to only as Lakshmi told OZY that she wanted to teach self-defense lessons to local girls. But locals refused to send their children to her. Lakshmi, now 41, suspects that parents worry she would teach the children something “bad” and influence them to become “immoral.” “People don’t want girls to be self-dependent because that would mean she would defy societal norms,” Lakshmi said. Based on interviews with 20 ex-combatants, the Routledge Handbook of Human Rights in Asia found that business loans have not provided sufficient economic stimulus to women who served the LTTE, and that they continue to have difficulty finding other work. These women face other challenges too. Satkunanathan said there have been human rights violations in the form of sexual abuse during the so-called rehabilitation process. Rinehart said women who served in the LTTE are more likely to be viewed as “loose” by men. “People don’t think we deserve to be part of the society,” said Malathy. “They want us to remain isolated.” |
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