Sexuality and Women's Rights in Armed Conflict in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The discourse of human rights in armed conflict situations is well adapted to respond to violence and violation, invoking internationally agreed principles of civil and political rights. However, in areas where the subject or domain of rights discourse is contested or controversial, human rights advocates appear less prepared to promote and defend such rights. Sexuality is one such domain. This paper explores the complex sexual choices women in Sri Lanka have had to negotiate, particularly widows and sex workers, within a context of ethnic conflict, militarisation and war. It argues that sexuality cannot be defined exclusively in terms of violation, even in a context dominated by violence, and that the sexual ordering of society may be subverted in such conditions. Newly widowed women and sex workers have had to negotiate self-determination as well as take responsibility for earning income and heading households, in spite of contrary community pressures. For women, political and economic rights are closely linked with the ability to determine their sexual and reproductive choices. The challenge to women's and human rights advocates is how to articulate sexual autonomy as a necessary right on a par with others, and strategise to secure this right during armed conflict and postwar reconstruction.

Résumé

Le discours des droits de l'homme dans les conflits armés est bien adapté pour répondre à la violence et aux violations, en invoquant les principes internationaux des droits civils et politiques. Néanmoins, quand le thème ou domaine du discours sur les droits est contesté ou controversé, les défenseurs des droits de l'homme semblent moins préparés à promouvoir et défendre ces droits. La sexualité est l'un de ces domaines. Les femmes sri-lankaises, en particulier les veuves et les prostituées, ont dû négocier des choix sexuels complexes, dans un contexte de conflit ethnique, de militarisation et de guerre. L'article avance que la sexualité ne peut être définie exclusivement en termes de violation, même dans un contexte dominé par la violence, et que, dans ces conditions, l'ordre sexuel de la société peut être renversé. Les veuves de fraı̂che date et les prostituées ont dû négocier leur autodétermination tout en gagnant un revenu et dirigeant la famille, malgré des pressions communautaires contraires. Pour les femmes, les droits politiques et économiques sont étroitement liés avec la capacité de déterminer leurs choix génésiques. Le défi pour les défenseurs des droits des femmes et des libertés fondamentales est de faire accepter que l'autonomie sexuelle est un droit aussi nécessaire que les autres, et de concevoir des stratégies pour le garantir pendant les conflits armés et la reconstruction de l'après-guerre.

Resumen

El discurso de los derechos humanos en situaciones de conflicto armado responde a la violencia y violación invocando principios internacionales de derechos civiles y polı́ticos. No obstante, en áreas donde este discurso es disputado o polémico, como la sexualidad, los defensores de los derechos humanos parecen estar menos preparados para promoverlos y defenderlos. En este trabajo se exploran las complejas decisiones de salud sexual que han tenido que negociar las mujeres de Sri Lanka, particularmente las viudas y trabajadoras sexuales, bajo conflicto étnico, militarización y guerra. Se argumenta que la sexualidad no puede definirse exclusivamente en términos de violación, aun en lugares dominados por la violencia, y que el orden sexual de la sociedad podrı́a ser subvertido en dichas condiciones. Las mujeres recién enviudadas y las trabajadoras sexuales han tenido que negociar la autodeterminación, ası́ como asumir la responsabilidad de ganar ingresos y llevar el hogar, pese a las presiones de la comunidad en su contra. Para ellas, los derechos polı́ticos y económicos están estrechamente vinculados a la capacidad de determinar sus opciones sexuales y reproductivas. El reto frente a los defensores y promotores de los derechos humanos y de las mujeres es cómo expresar claramente la autonomı́a sexual como un derecho necesario a la par con otros, y cómo formular estrategias para garantizarla durante el conflicto armado y la reconstrucción posguerra.

Key Words:

• sexual rights
• human rights
• armed conflict
• sex workers
• widowhood
• Sri Lanka

Militarisation and armed conflict have been a central frame of reference in South Asia for at least two decades, though the geographical area of military confrontation, intensity of conflict, and local and regional consequences vary significantly, governed as they are by particular histories of state–periphery hostilities, nationalist discourses and changing trajectories in the terms of conflict.¹ In a few cases, fragile and contested ceasefires are in place, as in Sri Lanka. In even fewer instances, there are tentative moves towards a full-fledged peace process and post-war reconstruction, as in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.

The violation of human rights by armed forces of the state, on the one hand, and armed groups contesting the state, on the other, is familiar during such hostilities and present also in situations of ceasefire, even if less readily recognised. Such violations range from the suspension of basic civil and political rights, the imposition of military rule and the mass killing, injury and displacement of non-combatants, to abduction, torture, rape, and extra-judicial killings. This last has been couched in terms of preventing terrorism or betrayal of the community or nation, while ceasefires have witnessed the settling of old scores, such as the murder of alleged informers.², ³

The discourse of human rights in armed conflict situations is well adapted to respond to violence and violation, invoking internationally agreed upon principles of civil and political rights. However, in areas where the subject or domain of rights discourse is contested or controversial, human rights defenders and advocates appear less prepared to engage proactively to promote and defend such rights. Sexuality is one such domain. The control of sexual behaviour and the linking of sexuality to gender constructions have been a significant aspect of anti-colonial and post-colonial nationalist projects, both in South Asia and elsewhere. ^{4 5 6 7} Nationalism has always had ramifications for women and consequences for the expression of female sexuality and the social, economic and cultural arrangements upon which sexual behaviour is premised. In a situation of post-colonial, inter-ethnic armed conflict, and a socio-cultural system where female sexuality is rarely represented in an affirmative way in public forums, as in Sri Lanka, the articulation and defence of sexual rights as they pertain to women is a complicated process. Yet women's sexual and reproductive rights are intimately linked with political and economic rights and cannot be considered secondary.

This paper explores the complex sexual choices women in Sri Lanka have had to negotiate, particularly widows and sex workers, within a context of ethnic conflict, militarisation and war. It focuses on issues of bodily integrity and sexual autonomy and implications for sexual rights. It relies in part on my ongoing research on gender role transformations, sexuality and mobility under militarisation, with particular attention to armed women and sex workers. My sources include published articles by researchers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), media reports, and an interview I conducted with Sunila Abeyesekera from the NGO Inform in Sri Lanka in July 2003. Inform is one of the few Sri Lankan institutions with a project that explicitly focuses on advocacy related to sexual rights, begun in 2002. I also draw on six interviews I conducted with Sinhala sex workers in 2003 and 2004 in Anuradhapura (a major transit point for troops) and Kurunegala (where many men have joined the military). All had military clients or family in the armed forces. Regarding widows, I have drawn on interviews published by other researchers.

The armed conflict in Sri Lanka

The 19-year old civil war in Sri Lanka was the consequence of several years of actual and perceived discrimination against the minority Tamil community by successive, post-independence, Sinhala-dominated governments. For instance, the Sinhala-Only Act of 1956, which made the Sinhala language the sole official language, stymied the advancement of Tamils in state-sector employment. Land distribution by the state, which made new areas arable under large-scale irrigation projects, ensured an increase in the numbers of Sinhala settlers in areas predominantly occupied by Tamils and Muslims. Access to resources, electoral outcomes and political representation for Tamil-speaking peoples were all affected. The frustration of nonviolent efforts by post-independence Tamil political parties to have their grievances heard by Sinhala-dominated governments, and subsequently to secure self-determination through peaceful means, led to the rise of militancy among Tamil youth in the late 1970s. Events leading to the anti-Tamil pogrom in July 1983 are deemed the official beginning of the armed ethnic conflict.⁸, ⁹

While several Tamil militant groups were active at the beginning of the conflict, by the early 1990s the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had emerged as the key militant formation through internecine warfare. They were committed to the establishment of an independent Tamil state comprising the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. While the arena of active conflict has been confined largely to these provinces, smaller-scale encounters, especially suicide bombings and raids by the LTTE took place in other areas, including the commercial capital Colombo. Additionally, the south of Sri Lanka was subjected to the “years of terror”, 1987–91, of armed engagement between state security forces and the extreme leftwing Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front), both Sinhala-dominated. This resulted in the death, disappearance and torture of many young Sinhala men.⁵, ¹⁰

Human rights violations by government troops, police and pro-government paramilitaries against Tamil non-combatants have been extensive, both within and outside the areas of direct conflict. These have included retaliatory attacks on unarmed civilians, extensive shelling and bombing of areas under civilian habitation, and harassment, torture and custodial rape under the guise of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The LTTE in turn has murdered Tamil dissidents, members of other Tamil militant groups or political parties, and sometimes Sinhala and Muslim civilians, and engaged in “ethnic cleansing” by driving Muslims and Sinhalese out of the northern province where they were in the minority.², ¹¹, ¹² In February 2002, the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE agreed to a ceasefire and embarked on peace negotiations, facilitated by the Norwegian government. While the ceasefire has held to date, the peace process has seen violations of the Memorandum of Understanding, and the temporary withdrawal of the LTTE from peace talks in mid-2003.

Women have been intimately implicated in the war, and not only as victims and survivors. They have engaged in active combat and played important roles in the military, though not high-level ones, and in coercive activities of the warring parties. The LTTE deployed women cadres in frontline combat and as suicide bombers.⁵ Women in the Sri Lankan armed forces have engaged largely in supportive roles but sometimes in risk-filled work, such as checkpoint duty.¹³ The public acknowledgement of women as actors and agents has nevertheless been minimal during the conflict or in the peace negotiations. Neither of the two negotiating teams in the peace process includes women. Only after much lobbying by women's groups and other organisations, such as Inform, the Social Scientists' Association, Women and Media Collective, Women's Educational and Research Centre and Muslim Women's Research Action Forum was the Sub-Committee on Gender Issues created at the end of 2002, as one of several sub-committees officially attending negotiations.¹⁴ It consists of ten members, half appointed by the Government and half by the LTTE.* The SGI's mandate is to ensure that a gender perspective and women's interests and concerns are represented in the peace process. However, thus far it has had little impact, in part because it cannot develop an independent programme or interventions.

Negotiating bodily integrity and sexual autonomy in war

Women share with men the problems of displacement, physical and psychological injury, loss and disappearance of kin, loss of housing, possessions, livelihood and lack of overall security during armed conflict. However, war also challenges notions of female domestication and sexual chastity and affects women's ability to depend on male breadwinners and heads of household, take exclusive responsibility for childrearing and care of elders, and withstand sexual harassment and assault.¹⁰, ¹⁵, ¹⁶ Women's rights pertaining to sexual choices are particularly affected.

As elsewhere in South Asia, Sri Lankan society, across ethnic and class lines, constructs female respectability in terms of pre-marital virginity, marriage, motherhood and sexual chastity and rarely treats sexuality in an affirmative manner or accords it positive value. A sexually compromised woman or girl foregoes the chance of marrying. The sexual ordering of society is oftentimes subverted in conditions of armed conflict, however, where the rule of law is largely suspended. Very young women, for example, including young teenage girls, have been forced into marriage by parents in the belief that marriage will provide protection against increased sexual vulnerability.¹⁷ This is a regression from a situation in which the age of marriage for women was increasing and signals a context of fear that effective familial and community sexual surveillance is less possible, both to discourage sexual activity in girls and provide them with protection against male sexual attention.

In the war zones and border terrains of Sri Lanka, although rape was not systematically used as an instrument of war, women, especially Tamil women, were vulnerable to sexual assault by government armed forces and non-LTTE paramilitaries.¹⁸ Checkpoints around the country were also sites of serious risk for Tamil women at the hands of the armed forces.¹⁹

Given that militarisation and war compromised existing social formations, it is not difficult to see why sexual activity framed by war risks being read as coercive under all circumstances, and why any exercise of choice, however complex its articulation, is deemed to be suspended. Representations of sexual activity in the war context were likely to be reported in the press in this manner.²⁰, ²¹ On the human rights and women's rights front, it requires an openness to sexual activity as a positive aspect of human life, to document and interpret instances where women, while seeking the best possible options in a terrain of great loss and limitation, are also using the interstices of the breakdown of social surveillance to define themselves anew as gendered and sexual subjects, sometimes in transgressive ways.²² The discussions on widows and sex workers below provide examples of this.

This is not to assume that for women, such a process is easy, unambivalent or always pleasurable, but rather to suggest that loss of male partners or husbands, kin, community, homes, possessions and secure and familiar value systems cannot be read exclusively as the complete disintegration of female subjectivity.²² The collapse of familiar support systems has propelled women into authoritative roles by default, including acting as primary breadwinner and head of household and making associated decisions.⁵, ¹⁵, ¹⁶, ²³ It also suggests that control over securing and deploying material resources could enable the means to make sexual choices other than by conventional social prescriptions, if women so chose.

Inform, a human rights documentation and advocacy organisation that has a strong commitment to women's rights, is among the few that have opted to be supportive of the complex sexual choices women are negotiating within the frame of militarisation and war. Inform has held national-level forums, targeting lawyers, medical professionals, the media and activists, to raise awareness of the right of women to resist marriage and to refuse sex in an environment where celibacy for women is unimaginable, and the right to engage in sexual activity de-linked from marriage or reproduction. The discussion of these interconnected concerns during a period of conflict is valuable not only to draw attention to the complexity of women's sexual choices and negotiations, but also to underscore that sexuality cannot be defined exclusively in terms of violation, even in a context dominated by violence.

Widows: negotiating self-determination in spite of community pressures

Drawing attention to and addressing the needs of widows in Sri Lanka has been the work of international humanitarian organisations, such as Oxfam²³ and Save the Children Norway,¹⁵ as well as local non-governmental organisations such as the Women's Development Foundation in Kurunegala. Reports from such organisations, press reports and studies by various researchers covering different parts of the country⁵, ¹⁰, ¹⁶, ²² delineate the challenges faced by thousands of women widowed by the armed conflict. Central is the immense and unanticipated responsibility bestowed on them by the death or “disappearance” of their husband, who has often been the breadwinner. Women suddenly need to acquire the skills to support their families, since many did not previously work outside the home. They often face pressures and hostility from their dead husband's kin, including bids to acquire his source of income, eviction from the shared family home and deprivation of property.¹⁰, ¹⁶, ²⁴

The status of women as wives within most communities is largely one of material dependency and inequality. Marriage is seen as a means both to contain female sexuality and allow its expression within a controlled domain. The death of a husband simultaneously marks the widow as inauspicious, sexually lacking, even indirectly responsible for his death, as well as potentially sexually transgressive, because there is no man to control her.¹⁶, ²⁴ If a Hindu Tamil widow wears the red pottu on her forehead or flowers in her hair, as a married woman would whose husband is living, she is subjected to gossip and derogation by community members for signalling her sexual availability to men.¹⁶ Widowed women may decide not to remarry for a number of reasons–because they believe in one spouse for life, to avoid being further alienated from the community or to avoid the possibility that children may not fare well with a new father. This decision does not alleviate the possibility of sexual harassment, however.¹⁰, ¹⁶, ²⁴

Rajasingham-Senanayake draws attention to displaced, widowed Tamil women's struggles to cope with disintegration while simultaneously securing extremely contested terrains of agency, and the need to recast widows in terms other than as “victims”. She points to how widows at the Siddambarapuram camp for displaced persons struggle to confront and reject the conventional nomination accorded to them as inauspicious beings doomed to social and cultural ostracism. Compelled to support their families and other dependants, they have refused to abandon wearing the red pottu. As Rajasingham-Senanayake points out, the particular challenge these women face is finding a cultural idiom in which they can express and affirm their empowerment and autonomy.²²

Wearing the red pottu allows them to “pass” as married women, holding at bay both ill-fortune and uninvited male sexual attention, while at the same time underscoring the lack in society of empowering cultural signs or markers for once-married women. In a transgressive (heterosexual) register, the pottu may also facilitate mobility and sexually autonomous agency–the capacity to be a “merry widow”–though with the attendant risks of communal censure, ostracism and even death for compromising communal honour or that of the emerging nation.

While newly widowed women learn how to negotiate between self-determination, responsibilities to dependants and community pressures, the Sri Lankan state appears committed to reasserting normative gender roles and, through this, the sexual status quo. In regard to rehabilitating internally displaced persons, state officials have allocated land with little attention to local inheritance patterns or traditions of land ownership–which may be matrilineal or bilateral, rather than patrilineal–or to the changed conditions of women's lives. Thus, wives are ignored as potential title-holders, and land is given in men's names only. A widow may inherit such land only if it can be proven that the male head of household is dead and that she was nominated before her husband's death to inherit land. Thus, while proven widows may have some recourse to the state's beneficence, conditional upon the husband's wishes, land inheritance is refused to women deserted by their husbands or where a husband's whereabouts are unknown, even if they are currently the head of household.¹² Thus, the state ties together male privilege, sexual practice and material autonomy. It rewards women who are “properly” appended to a man and penalises all others.

Sex work and other marginalised sexual relations

In the course of the armed conflict, women across ethnic groups engaged in sex work to obtain basic necessities in the midst of internal displacement and extreme structural breakdown, because war foreclosed other economic opportunities²⁰, ²¹ and because the presence of troops as clients ensured an income. (Personal communication, Indra, a sex worker in Anuradhapura, 10 November 2003, and Chitra, a sex worker in Kurunegala, 28 January 2004). Sometimes selling sex has provided greater remuneration and autonomy than other available jobs, such as working in a garment factory, which can also open women to sexual harassment (Personal communication, Inoka, a sex worker in Anuradhapura, 15 September and 10 November 2003). Women's awareness of this link and their ability to negotiate such choices preempts them being seen exclusively as victims, while compelling attention to the connection between economic rights and sexual autonomy.*

Sex work^† under militarisation is a controversial and contested activity for women. On the one hand, sex work has almost invariably accompanied militarisation and troop movement internationally.²⁵ On the other, the sex worker, although abandoned by respectable society and marked by criminal law,²⁶, ²⁷ still causes anxiety in the nationalist endeavour. The places where women exchange sex for money, which are marked as morally degenerate, become ones where other contemptible acts may be committed, such as betrayal of the nation. Outside militarised settings, sex workers regularly face dangers such as violence from the police, pimps, brothel owners and clients,²⁸ as well as being criminalised for loitering, soliciting and living off the earnings of prostitution,²⁶ making them vulnerable to arrest when the police raid brothels. While sex workers may unexceptionally be “used” in national security interests, as in the celebrated case of Tehelka in India,²⁹ armed conflict raises the level of danger sex workers face because it gives exceptional authority to armed men and increases the vulnerability of everyone deemed to be outside the law.

In the course of the war in Sri Lanka, the police, deploying the Prevention of Terrorism Act, have invaded suspected brothels, on allegations that Tamil female sex workers with ties to the LTTE have been retrieving security secrets from clients who are members of the armed forces and police.³⁰ The Tamil writer, Sumathy, in her award-winning play script, ‘In the Shadow of the Gun’, which traces the victimisation, resilience and resistance of different women in the course of the war, narrates as one story the murder of a Tamil sex worker by militants because her clients have been men of the Sri Lankan armed forces.³¹ As a result of the polarisation based on ethnic identity in this conflict, cross-ethnic sexual relationships can be marked as treasonous, even in contexts outside prostitution. Thus, Tamil women who have had sexual liaisons with Sinhala soldiers, whether within or outside of marriage, have faced heavy censure from the Sri Lankan Army,³² and even murder by the LTTE on suspicion of spying for the Sri Lankan security forces.³³ Transgressing an ethnic boundary is no longer just a family or communal matter, but of national import.

Brothels are routinely raided by the police.²⁸ However, the case of Hewagam Koralalage Maximus Danny,³⁴ who petitioned the Supreme Court regarding the violation of his fundamental rights, provides insight into the risks of sex work under militarisation. Danny was a trishaw driver who, in 1998, spent the night at a guest house with his female lover. The police raided and arrested everyone occupying six rooms in the guest house at that time, charging them under the Brothels Ordinance. In court, the police stated that they had visited the guest house because they had had information that LTTE suspects were present, and had arrested the occupants of all six rooms because none had been able to establish their respective identities. The Supreme Court ruled in Danny's favour, pointing out that having sexual intercourse was not in itself an offence, and there was no evidence that Danny had managed or assisted in running a brothel as per the Brothels Ordinance. The judges dismissed the claim that the police were acting under suspicion that LTTE cadres were in residence, because only sex workers and clients, and Danny and his lover, had been arrested.

Besides being remarkable for the court's endorsement of consensual, adult (hetero)sexual relations and associated sexual privacy, the case of Maximus Danny prompts attention to the fact that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was used by the police to justify access to places where sexual activity takes place, disrupt pleasure, harass sex workers and shame by arrest those who seek “illicit” pleasure. In this case, the police invoked the PTA precisely because the PTA carries such authority in a situation of armed conflict. In addition, it compels the question whether Danny and the other occupants would simply have been charged under the Brothels Ordinance had they been Tamil rather than Sinhalese or Muslim. In a context where many Tamils have been taken into custody simply on mild suspicion of links to the LTTE, and held indefinitely without trial under the PTA,² and where suspected LTTE cadres have been tortured and raped in custody by the police and armed forces,³⁵ it is unlikely that the police would have so quickly charged and released all those arrested. It is also questionable whether the guest house occupants would not have had their national identity cards under emergency rule, because they would have known that that would have warranted arrest by itself.

Inform actively assisted Danny's lawyer in this case, and called on activists and advocates for sexual rights to use this judgment in their own initiatives as a statement about the rights of consenting adults to have sex. Inform also pointed out that a key challenge to human rights groups and women's rights organisations was to take on board violations of the rights of sexually marginalised groups and individuals, rather than distance themselves on the basis of prejudice (Sunila Abeyesekera, personal communication, 11 July 2003). As matters stand, rarely would a human rights lawyer defend a sex worker in court against a human rights violation.

Whether the Danny judgment is indeed applicable across all sexual orientations and sexual arrangements would have to be tested. The Penal Code criminalises same-sex relations for both men and women, even if consensual,³⁶ and the fact that the Constitution of Sri Lanka recognises the family as the fundamental unit of society, deserving of protection (Article 27.12), has been used to denigrate or quell challenges to heteronormativity,* and even excuse violence against people who live outside the heteronormative model. For example, when a group of lesbian women wished to hold a conference in 1999, a local newspaper published a letter from a male reader declaring that they should be raped. Representatives of gay rights, women's and human rights organisations protested that the letter and its publication incited violence against women and took the issue to the Press Council, who are concerned with media ethics. The Council ruled that lesbianism was illegal, immoral, sadistic, salacious and against Sri Lankan culture, and therefore deserved to be condemned. It rejected charges of any wrongdoing on the part of the newspaper and fined the complainant for presuming to speak on behalf of lesbians when he himself was not one.³⁷

Whether such a judgment could be applied more broadly to counter nationalist anxieties about “disruptive” sex is also doubtful. Inform would need to strategise further on how to safeguard sexual autonomy amidst such complex hostilities. Nationalist moral censure resists the fact that the severe social and economic disruptions of conflict, foreclosing other opportunities for material remuneration, may make sex work an unavoidable choice for women regardless of their ethnic background. The construction of the good Tamil, Sinhala or Muslim woman mandates, nevertheless, that by choosing sex work, no matter why, women are excluded from being recouped into the nation again in peacetime. Given some indications that a sexually puritan regime may well accompany reconstruction, such as the LTTE prescribing dress codes for Tamil women and discouraging free intermingling among Tamil youth,³⁸ it seems unlikely that assuring sex workers dignity by decriminalising sex work or recognising agency and labour rights for sex workers will form part of mandates of recovery. It is also possible that local NGOs who endorse heteronormativity might advocate quite the opposite.

Promoting sexual autonomy during armed conflict and reconstruction

Armed conflict is the definitive arena in which the rule of law is challenged and violations of human rights occur and are contested. In the context of armed conflict as an aspiration to self-determination and reconstruction after it, in which men and women have not participated equally, the assertion of sexual rights may be suppressed through the logic of “greatest importance”. That is, the restoration of political and economic rights may be deemed paramount by ignoring that, for women, the capacity to enjoy and assert their political and economic rights may be closely linked with their right and capacity to determine their sexual and reproductive choices. In fact, any right that can be asserted as being in the interests of the community or group is far more likely to be acknowledged and supported than rights labelled as individual or imagined as liable to affect the community adversely, which are more vulnerable. Sexual rights are most likely to fall into the latter category, if they are seen as legitimate at all, in contexts where sexuality, especially female sexuality, is burdened with negative meaning.

The challenge to women's and human rights advocates is how to articulate sexual autonomy and free and informed sexual expression as necessary and integrated rights on a par with others, and proactively strategise to secure and promote these rights during armed conflict and the fragile peace that follows. The concerns of widows are likely to find sympathy and campaigns to ameliorate their circumstances²⁴ because the nationalist sentiment, mourning the loss of male kin, can still be invoked. In contrast, sex workers would need to have their work decriminalised, and public awareness raised regarding their rights to dignity, bodily integrity and work, as a companion to any discussion on “their place in the nation”.

As Inform gleaned from its national forums, however, at present people in Sri Lanka tend to shy away from discussions about sex divorced from reproduction (Sunila Abeyesekera, personal communication, 11 July 2003). Hence, effective strategies to advance sexual rights may require drawing on existing discourses and political commitments espoused by rights' advocates to intervene on behalf of those at risk, rather than advocate sexual rights per se. At the same time, advocates will have to be vigilant that sexual rights issues are not completely subsumed by the language of political and economic rights but, rather, continuously demonstrate how these are linked–especially for women. Critically, in conflict situations, strategising would include the commitment to work with women in the circumstance where they are currently located in terms of their sexual lives and options, i.e. recognising situations of sexual autonomy and authority where these have been asserted, whether in a normatively conformist or dissident manner. Otherwise, the possibility of articulating sexual rights may well be crushed under a sexually regressive and repressive steamroller of post-war reconstruction, and the nationalist mandates invested in reasserting sexual chastity instead.

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the seminar “Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and South East Asia”, Bellagio, Italy, September 2003, organised by Crea and Tarshi. Interviews with sex workers were conducted as part of a separate project supported by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women, Canada. Parvani Pinnewala helped interpret for these interviews.

Notes

* This is problematic as there is no identifiable Tamil woman among the government nominees. By default, this makes the LTTE the sole representative of Tamil women's interests, regardless of whether or not all Tamil women support LTTE political positions.

* Thus, the three sex workers who made these points were all working independently of pimps.

† I use “sex work” here, which conveys the value and dignity of work, rather than “prostitution”, which is burdened with moral judgment in comparison.

* By heteronormativity, I refer to the system whereby (i) heterosexuality is centered by the marginalisation of sexualities such as homosexuality and bisexuality, and (ii) within heterosexuality itself, sex within marriage is privileged while sex outside marriage is devalued.