Testimony Under Threat: Women’s Voices and the Pursuit of Justice in Post-War Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper foregrounds how women's public testimony as part of a formal transitional justice initiative is shaped by the particular context in which a commission operate, including the political and security environment. While the literature has engaged with the gendered predicaments of truth commissions after peace agreements and during transitions away from non-democratic rule, the function of such initiatives in more authoritarian and in immediate postwar contexts is generally overlooked. I examine women's testimonies from Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), and contend that pervasive militarization and insecurity, and the conduct of the Commission, influenced the stories that came forth. Women's testimonies in the war-torn areas primarily represent pleas for information about missing family members and reflect important silences about the women's own experiences of abuse, including ongoing postwar insecurities. The analysis raises questions about what may be expected from transitional justice efforts in difficult postwar contexts.

Disrupting the Saviour Politics in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Global South: Grassroots Women Creating Gender Norms in Nepal and Sri Lanka

“…In Nepal, marginalisation is based largely on gender, caste and class, while in Sri Lanka mainly on gender, ethnicity and religion, although caste and ethnic structural violences impact both countries. Nepal’s civil war was launched by Maoists seeking democracy by overthrowing a long-standing monarchy (K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019).…”

“…Nepal’s NAP ended in 2016 and a second NAP is in the works. Sri Lanka’s governments long resisted NAP development, which has been attributed to both state and societal resistance to women’s political participation (Singh, 2017) but is also likely linked to state refusal to address the root causes of Tamil grievances and state unwillingness to rectify structural and direct violence against minority communities (Bastian, 2013; Höglund, 2019). A NAP is currently being drafted in Sri Lanka, although it has yet to be finalised.…”

“…Requests by the UN to investigate alleged crimes against humanity in the last stages of the war when 40,000 civilians suspected to have been killed by the government were rebuffed (Thiranagama, 2011). Rajapaksa's government attempted to heal the country post-war by assigning reconstruction to the Sinhalese-dominated military, downplaying or ignoring state human rights abuses and promoting economic development (Bastian, 2013;Höglund, 2019). Sri Lanka's government has largely ignored the obligations of 1325 and the WPS agenda.…”

“…Some of these privileged Global South women seek to ‘save’ marginalised women at the grassroots, presuming that they know what is best for all Global South women while often gatekeeping grassroots women from participating in 1325 NAP development and implementation and other WPS activities (Horst, 2017; Luna & Whetstone, 2022). Yet most privileged women in the Global South typically have little understanding of grassroots women’s needs and interests, and most remain unaccountable to these women, who are excluded from, or marginalised within, NGOs (Horst, 2017; K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019; Narayanaswamy, 2014, 2016).…”

“We Are All Alive . . . But Dead”: Cultural Meanings of War Trauma in the Tamil Diaspora and Implications for Service Delivery

“…Furthermore, the gender constructions and their influence in sanctioning expressions of distress in Tamil women is also observed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission testimonies of South African women (Ross, 2003) and the narratives of Bosnian rape survivors (Močnik, 2019). Höglund (2019) comments on the gendered dimensions of the public Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) testimonies by Tamil women from the war-torn North and East of Sri Lanka. The author reflects on the trend in the majority of these testimonies that women's experiences are told primarily in relation to the men in their lives, particularly husbands and sons.…”