by KANNAN SUNDARAM
Speaking Up: “[Sri Lankan writer] Sharmila [Seyyid, on the left,] continues to be in partial hiding, fearful of her child’s safety, but still bold and confident.” “On the night of January 8, on the pointed advice of the police, Perumal Murugan [on the right] fled his hometown with his family. A day later, Tiruchengode town observed a total shutdown protesting his novel, “Mathorubhagan.” This came after weeks of abusive and threatening phone calls. Earlier, on December 26, an illegal assembly of people burnt copies of his book, demanded a ban on the book and the arrest of its author and its publisher.” PHOTO/TEXT/The Hindu
First exiled from her country, Sri Lankan writer Sharmila Seyyid, has now been ‘raped’ and ‘killed’ online.
Fundamentalism knows no boundaries. In India, it was Perumal Murugan who announced the death of the writer in him. In Sri Lanka, writer Sharmila Seyyid was ‘raped’ and ‘murdered’ online on March 28, marking a new low in the history of intolerance. If casteist and Hindutva forces drove the writer in Mr. Murugan to death, it was fundamentalist Muslim groups who ‘killed’ Ms. Seyyid online. A seemingly real news report of the event, accompanied by a gory photoshopped picture of Ms. Seyyid’s body, went viral. Its impact was so real that her family and friends rushed to her home in shock and sorrow.
Her father Seyyid Ahmed wrote in his complaint in Eravur police station in Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka that there has been a concerted effort to incite hatred in the Muslim community against his daughter. Threats of kidnapping were also sent to Ms. Seyyid’s younger sister. It has become hard for the family to live in the community amidst all the rumours and suspicion, Mr. Ahmed said. He greatly fears for the lives of his daughters and their children.
The controversy
Ms. Seyyid, a single mother, journalist, activist and writer, was barely 30 when she was in the eye of the controversy that forced her into self-exile from eastern Sri Lanka. She has a graduate degree in journalism, and is the founder-president of the Organisation for Social Development, established in 2009, a community-based organisation in Eravur. On November 18, 2012, she was interviewed on BBC TamilOsai after her first collection of poems Siragu Mulaitha Penn (The women who grew wings) was released in Sri Lanka. Justice Minister Rauff Hakeem, speaking at the event, highlighted a few of her poems, one of which one was about sex workers.
In response to a question from the BBC reporter, Ms. Seyyid said that legalising sex work would help protect sex workers. This was interpreted as endorsing prostitution, considered haram in Islam. The threatening calls began soon after. By the next morning, Ms. Seyyid had received hundreds of missed calls on her mobile phone. There were news reports that condemned her for supporting sex work and the social media joined in.
Ms. Seyyid issued a clarification explaining that she was only highlighting a social reality and did not intend to defy Islamic tenets. She expressed regret for unwittingly hurting people’s sentiments. But when clergy compelled her to retract the statement, she refused. An English academy she ran along with her sister was damaged in an attack and an attempt was made to burn it down. She fled Sri Lanka soon after, but the online world continued to watch her every move and hound her. She has been warned repeatedly for posting photographs on Facebook of herself without a purdah. When she posted a photo album of selfies with her son, she was warned for posing playfully like a ‘mendicant in penance’.
The Hindu for more