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Resort to prostitution a result of militarisation - Ananthy Sasitharan

Recently elected Northern Provincial Councillor and civil society activist Ananthy Sasitharan has criticised many claims in an IRIN article on why more and more women are turning to sex work in the Northeast. Ananthy criticised the article for trivialising Tamil women turning to prostitution as purely finance-driven, arguing instead that in reality militarisation in the Northeast has created a culture where abuse, harassment and rape of Tamil women at the hands of the Sri Lankan Army has become commonplace.

Writing on globaltamilnews.net (in Tamil) Ananthy blamed the regime in Colombo and its associates for repeatedly “dragging through the mud” the women trying to recover from the horrors of Mullivaaykkal.

Ananthy disputed the IRIN article’s reasoning that seasonal demand has encouraged the increase in Tamil women turning to sex work. Instead, Ananthy says that the resort to prostitution is not a last resort decision based on financial desperation, but one that vulnerable Tamil women are in the end reduced to, after widespread experience of abuse at the hands of the Sri Lankan army.

Ananthy slammed the claim that “increased number of Sri Lankan-born Tamils from the diaspora visiting their place of origin since fighting ended four years ago has also increased demand for commercial sex”, saying that such statements were made to portray the Tamil diaspora as alienated and foreign to the Tamils of the Northeast and as hindering the post-war recovery process. Such claims, Ananthy said, attempt to undermine the crucial post-war support that diaspora individuals provide to relatives and organisations provide on a wider scale. She also said that the credibility of all civil society and community workers could not be guaranteed.

Writing of the everyday struggle faced by female-run households to simultaneously provide for, protect and raise families, Ananthy urged the Northern Provincial Council, Tamil parliamentarians and diaspora organisations to work on empowering Tamil women in the Northeast to live and work with safety and dignity.

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