by TISARANEE GUNASEKARA
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa SOURCE/Wikipedia
“My opinion is that nobody can make men responsible for the violence against women. Women are responsible for it…” Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa [i]
Aminal al-Filali was fifteen when she was raped.
According to Morocco’s penal-code, a rapist could escape prosecution if he married his victim. Amina did not want to marry her rapist; but the rapist was willing, her parents were willing and the judge was willing.
After several months of abusive marriage, Amina drank rat-poison. She was just sixteen.
Amina’s suicide caused a national uproar against the country’s ‘rape marriage law’. In January 2014, Morocco’s parliament unanimously approved the repealing of that archaic and unjust law[ii].
Sri Lanka, in the second decade of the 21st Century, is planning to enact her own ‘rape marriage law’.
According to Minister of Child Development and Women’s Affairs Tissa Karalliyadda, under the proposed law a rapist will be able to marry his victim, if she consents. If the victim is underage, the rapist can marry her when she is eighteen[iii].
This is the Rajapaksa solution to the growing menace of rape/child-rape – not tougher punishments or speedier justice, but enabling the rapist to escape punishment by marrying his victim.
If enacted, this law will have a particularly deadly effect on child victims, many of whom might be compelled by familial and societal pressure to marry their rapists – assuming the perpetrators are not already married or not too closely related to the victim. In a situation where the victim is financially dependent on her family (and the absolute majority of eighteen-year-olds are financially dependent), any clause about ‘consent’ will be a mere fig leaf for a forced marriage. The rapist will escape punishment, the family will be saved from ‘social stigma’ while the victim will be condemned to a lifetime of abuse (especially since under Lankan law martial rape is not a crime). Instead of living with the memory of the nightmare, she will be forced to live the nightmare, everyday of her life.
According to a study by Lawyers for Human Rights and Development (LHRD), “since 2008 there had been a trend in imposing suspended sentences in cases of rape and child molestation…. even convicts of gang rape of underage females including school children had been given suspended sentences by courts.”[iv] A recent UNICEF study identified inadequacies in existing laws as a major cause of the growing epidemic of child rape/abuse: “The procedures for investigation and prosecution of child abuse, witness protection and support for the victim are grossly inadequate…. The entire system needs to be assessed and rebuilt, through all the stages, with efficiency as a key priority…”[v] Not only is the law inadequate; it moves at glacial pace. During a recent parliamentary debate, UNP parliamentarian Ajith P Perera pointed out that a rape case usually takes around seven to ten years[vi].
Colombo Telegraph for more