{"id":51060,"date":"2017-01-25T20:41:10","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=51060"},"modified":"2017-01-25T22:11:02","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T03:11:02","slug":"war-affectedsinhalatamil-and-muslim-women-in-east-evolve-into-community-counsellors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=51060","title":{"rendered":"War Affected Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim Women in East Evolve Into Community Counsellors."},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy
\nMeera Srinivasan<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Thangamanikkam Saradadevi, Vellathambi Junaida and Jayadeepa Padmasri sat on a panel listening to hundreds of people in Batticaloa speak of their missing relatives, of land occupied by the military and of their waning patience, they could instantly relate to them.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Healing process: (From left) Thangamanikkam Saradadevi, Vellathambi Junaida and Jayadeepa Padmasri, part of a task force counselling war victims. | Photo Credit: Picasa-via: The Hindu<\/p><\/div>\n

This was not merely because the three women were trained as counsellors but also because they were fellow survivors of Sri Lanka\u2019s brutal war and familiar with all that it took away and left behind.<\/p>\n

Ms. Deepa, as Jayadeepa prefers being called, has been searching for her husband who went missing in May 2009, barely two years after their wedding.<\/p>\n

A decade after Ms. Saradadevi\u2019s husband was shot dead by the Army, her son was conscripted by the LTTE.<\/p>\n

Ms. Junaida saw the LTTE go after her relatives, as they did after many Muslim families in the North and the East.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The three women, now part of different community organisations in Batticaloa, were part of a zonal-level task force that counselled war-affected people on the reconciliation mechanisms that the government has proposed.<\/p>\n

Govt.-appointed panel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a government-appointed Consultation Task Force (CTF), comprising activists and academicians, released a report based on such public hearings across Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

This is not the first such exercise. Families of victims have testified to different, government-appointed and other commissions in the past. However, there has been no action or follow-up on any. \u201cThe government would send a team of people, some of whom would be very cold and indifferent to us. They were usually Sinhalese and we were never sure if what we said was properly translated to them,\u201d recalled Ms. Deepa, who has appeared before panels, submitting details about her missing husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I met a woman of my age, I would feel her pain immediately,\u201d Ms. Saradadevi (56) said. After her husband was killed in the 1990s, she packed and sold peanuts for a living. In the habit of reading anything she could lay her hands on, she spotted a note in a newspaper while wrapping peanuts. It was an advertisement calling for women interested in working with war widows. She took it up. As the war intensified, her son was abducted and, her son-in law went missing in the final years. \u201cHe returned, but had lost one leg in a shelling. There was no respite, it was one problem after another.\u201d The same family was victimised repeatedly.<\/p>\n

This time, the three women were seated on the other side of the table. Brainstorming in advance, they decided to try and make the process more sensitive and humane.<\/p>\n

Though they were invested in the process, the three women don\u2019t view the exercise without scepticism. In a sense, it was \u201cjust another commission\u201d, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the government was serious about it, why did it outsource the process to civil society and later abandon us?\u201d Ms. Deepa asked. \u201cThere was no ownership from the government, locals saw it as an NGO programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to the perceived futility of the consultations, Ms. Deepa said: \u201cAt the end of the day, people affected by a war have a natural tendency for peace and non-recurrence. They say just let us be, without further confusing us with these new processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy:The Hindu<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Meera Srinivasan When Thangamanikkam Saradadevi, Vellathambi Junaida and Jayadeepa Padmasri sat on a panel listening to hundreds of people in Batticaloa speak of their missing relatives, of land occupied by the military and of their waning patience, they could instantly relate to them. This was not merely because the three women were trained as …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘War Affected Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim Women in East Evolve Into Community Counsellors.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51064,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51060\/revisions\/51064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}