Facebook icon
Twitter icon
e-mail icon

State of denial

Responding to a recent International Crisis group report, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the US, Jaliya Wickramasuriya strenuously denied all claims that violence against women in the country were taking place.

Claiming that “rapes, this and that not taking any place in Sri Lanka”, the Ambassador asserted since Sri Lanka had the world’s first female Prime Minister and most of the country’s teachers and nurses were female, that women’s rights was not endangered at all.

Wickramasuriya then went on to state that

“Like any other country, we have, like couple of cases.”

He then trailed off saying,

 “When it comes, the police or whoever will take action against that… normally.”


A recent Groundviews piece commenting on the Ambassador’s statement said,

“So what exactly is the Ambassador saying? There is no abuse, but there is some abuse, and when there is some abuse, the Police deals with it… normally.”

See Groundviews’ comments here: “How hard is it to admit fault, Ambassador Wickramasuriya?”

See our earlier post: ICG - militarised North-East leading to women's insecurity (20 Dec 2011)

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.

For more ways to donate visit https://donate.tamilguardian.com.