The Sunday Times has reported on the plight of a 16-year old child, born to a widowed mother who was repeatedly raped as she was forced into sexual slavery in a holiday resort in the South of the island.

The girl was trafficked from Batticaloa after a smuggler promised to send her abroad, but instead she was sent to a holiday resort in Hikkaduwa, where she was repeatedly raped by a tourist.

Chief Inspector Sumith Gunaratne commented that the ‘modus operandi’ of the agent of the prostitution racket was to search the North and East for war-orphaned minors, in order to force them into the sex-slave trade. He commented,

“Investigations also revealed that the elder Saudi was the chief agent in the racket, and had been in the country for the past four months, making several visits to the North and East.”

“We fear that the Hikkaduwa find is just the tip of the iceberg, and there may be a larger syndicate with many similar cases gone undetected."

See the report from the Sunday Times here.

A leaked US embassy cable from 2007 stated that Tamil paramilitary groups ran prostitution rings to “take care” of Sri Lankan soldiers, as well as kidnapping and trafficking minors to prostitution rings throughout India and Malaysia. It was reported that some women were forced to have sex with between 5 and 10 soldiers every night.

See our earlier post: Sri Lanka’s leaders complicit in forced prostitution and child sex trafficking (22 Dec 2010)

See the full text of the cable here.

Also see our earlier posts:

Tamil war widows ‘forced into prostitution to feed children’ (18 March 2012)

ICG - militarised North-East leading to women's insecurity (20 Dec 2011)