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Help secure justice for mothers

May 8, 2008

We are writing to you today to call your urgent attention to escalating attacks on women in Sri Lanka.

Violence against women by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces has been a perennial concern since Sri Lanka's independence. Sri Lankan and international watchdog groups have publicly protested the rapes and murders of women by the Sri Lanka security forces since the 1950s.

Recent acts of violence against women by the Sri Lankan police convey a systematic assault on minority women. Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently released a report deploring the Sri Lankan government for having become "of the world's worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances." The issue of enforced disappearances uniquely affects women in Sri Lanka: both by having to sustain families devastated by missing family members, as well as being a target for abductions themselves.

A local human rights group, the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR), reported that more than 15 women have been abducted or murdered each month since the beginning of January 2008. On May 4, Naduvillan Saraswathy, a 31-year old Tamil woman in Jaffna, was forcibly abducted by armed men in military uniforms. Neighbors say she was blindfolded and shoved into a white van. On April 29, Ranee, a Tamil woman detained by the police, died under investigation in Jaffna. The day before, a female corpse was recovered close to a Sri Lankan Army occupied area. Medical reports showed gunshot wounds and signs of torture.

These systematic assaults on women amount to war crimes. Due to the escalating crisis in Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch and the State Department have called for international human rights monitors to investigate violations by both parties in the conflict. However, the Sri Lankan government has repeatedly refused to accept such a desperately-needed team.

Help end Sri Lanka's violence against women by pressuring Sri Lanka to accept an international human rights monitoring mission and to respect international human rights standards. Until the violence stops, it is the women and children who bear the burden as innocent victims of war.