Sri Lankan police fail to protect harassed female ex-combatant

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 October 2010, 09:52 GMT]
Sri Lanka police in Veala’nai in the islets of Jaffna have ignored the complaints made by a former underage female member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on attempts made by a gang of ten men on 09 October to abduct and sexually abuse her in her relative’s house in Veala’nai. IOM and UNICEF officials who had facilitated her release from the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention camp and placed her in the custody of her relatives too have not taken steps to protect her from being intimidated by her tormentors even in Jaffna Teaching Hospital where she is admitted for treatment, the girl said. The family members who had given her refuge had been attacked by the gang and injured when they tried to protect the girl.

SLA soldiers had arrested the under eighteen-year-old girl combatant of LTTE at the end of the war and detained her in one of the camps in Vavuniyaa.

The girl said that police had failed to arrest the persons who attempted to abduct and sexually abuse her though she had given the particulars of the men in her complaint to the police.

The officials of IOM and UNICEF who visit the girl in Jaffna Teaching Hospital too had not taken action to provide her protection from being intimidated in the hospital by the men who tried to abduct her, the girl said.

The islets of Jaffna is in the total control of Sri Lanka Navy and administered by Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), a constituent of ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), led by Sri Lanka minister Douglas Devananda.

Veala’nai residents said that EPDP men are involved in the attempt to abduct and sexually abuse the girl and that the police are reluctant to take action against them as they are politically powerful.

The girl who had lost all her family members in the war said that she is firm in seeing that no other girl falls victim to similar harassment.