A feminist movement in Sri Lanka: The potential and the necessity

Contemporary South Asia

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 67-74

  Hensman, Rohini ^a  

^a Union Research Group   (India)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER INEQUALITY; WOMEN'S ROLE;

SRI LANKA;

EID: 0029954156     PISSN: 09584935     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09584939608719779     Document Type: Article

References (3)

1. Interviews with Tamil refugees in Britain were carried out in 1989; interviews in Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim refugee camps in Sri Lanka were carried out in 1990.
2. Quoted in Rohini Hensman, Journey Without a Destination: Is There a Solution to the Problem of Sri Lankan Refugees? (London, The Refugee Council, 1993). Although not all the women, especially in Sinhalese camps, were as clear-sighted as the woman quoted here, and by no means all the men supported ethnic nationalist positions, women were, in general, more critical of ethnic nationalism. For example, one Tamil woman voiced a common sentiment when she said, 'I don't want any Eelam! I think people of different communities can live together; what we need is peace, not Eelam'. At another group interview with Tamil refugees, the following remarks were made by the women: -When the armed groups are fighting, ordinary people are suffering. -It's wrong to hurt innocent people. Both sides are wrong. -Yes, that's true. Killing innocent people only makes things worse. -They should stop fighting and talk, solve the problems by discussion. -I would like all three communities to live together in peace. -Yes, that's right. (General agreement) Muslim women refugees too, by contrast with male leaders of their community who were demanding more arms, expressed a strong desire for peace and ethnic harmony.
3. An example of this type of argument is an article by B. Fonseka in The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), 1 September 1991, p 5, where he says: Human rights have become an industry in the developed world, with organisations such as Amnesty International and Asia Watch working full time to publicise human rights abuses in the world. But an important point to consider is whether these same Western countries first solved human rights problems in their own nations before they went on to achieve economic well-being. These nations seem to forget that they themselves achieved their high economic standards at an extremely high cost in human rights. Slavery, which was abolished in the USA relatively recently, is a prime example of the price paid by human beings so that the country could achieve its present economic situation. The industrial revolution had such an adverse impact on workers that the first trade union movements were a direct result of it, and it is trade unions that have been in the forefront of the human rights campaign. Western countries, having achieved economic well-being, now tell developing nations to take care of human rights first, before moving towards economic advancement, which is exactly the reverse of what they themselves did. I am not trying to downgrade the importance of human rights, but human rights have their place and must come about in a certain logical fashion. A consciousness and recognition of human rights will come when society achieves a high economic level, which is what happened in the West. The United States and Australia, which are in the forefront of the human rights movement, have forgotten about the centuries of oppression that the aborigines and native Americans or Indians went through. What the West must understand is that high standards of human rights may not be possible in developing nations.