Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom.[5] This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.[6]
Further rapes of Tamils were carried out by Sinhalese mobs during the 1977, 1981 and 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms.[7][8][9]
The LTTE has been noted for its general lack of use of sexual violence,[20][21][22] though there have been isolated instances of rape of Tamils by LTTE members. Some LTTE members accused of rape faced execution from the leadership.[note 2]
Many rapes went unreported during the conflict due to various factors, including intimidation from the perpetrators, impunity for the crime,[note 3][note 4] and the severe stigma attached to it in conservative Tamil society.[note 5][27][28]
Sex slavery and mass rape of Tamils by government forces peaked at the end of the war in 2009, and persisted in the post-war era, with human rights groups describing it as 'systematic'.[note 6][30]
Government forces consistently deny all the charges of mass rape, with one senior army official saying the following in 2010:
"Throughout their training, our boys are taught to hate the Tigers, they see them as disgusting animals, not fit to live. I am 200 per cent sure that they didn't rape Tamil women. Why would they fuck them if they hate them so much?"[31]
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^International Truth and Justice Project (2014), 5 years on: The White Flag Incident 2009-2014 http://white-flags.org/
^Tarzie Vittachi – Emergency '58: The story of the Ceylon race riots (1959), Andre Deutsch
^Neil De Votta – Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, p127
^Cite error: The named reference lankafreelibrary.com was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Brian Eads – The Cover Up That Failed – The Prohibited Report From Colombo, London Observer – 20 September 1981
^E.M. Thornton & Niththyananthan, R. – Sri Lanka, Island of Terror – An Indictment, (ISBN0 9510073 0 0), 1984, Appendix A
^Katherine W. Bogen, April 2016, Rape and Sexual Violence: Questionable Inevitability and Moral Responsibility in Armed Conflict, Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark, Volume 2
^Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), 12 January 2000, Crime Against Humanity: Systematic Detention, Torture, Rape and Murder as Weapon of War in Sri Lanka (AHRC UA Index 000112)
^Mohan, Rohini (2016). "The Fear of Rape: Tamil Women and Wartime Sexual Violence". In Jayawardena, K; Pinto-Jayawardena, K (eds.). The Search for Justice: The Sri Lankan Papers. Zubaan Series on Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia. New Delhi: Zubaan. pp. 237–295.
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