![]() A pyrrhic victory for the Kumaraswamy family, who lost three members of their family in a senseless act of violence. Krishanthi Kumaraswamy was the first successful prosecution against military personnel for rape in the context of the conflict in Sri Lanka”. The State Counsel for the prosecution in the Kumaraswamy case said in an interview, “In March or April of 1997 the case started and in 1998 it was over. Arguably, they had some power and influence and their family members were able to get the then President of the country, Chandrika Kumaratunga to intervene and justice was served in a fairly quick trial without jury. Both younger children were in the best fee paying schools in Jaffna (the oldest daughter was in Colombo). Krishanthi’s mother grew up in Malaya and did a Bachelor of Arts in India, returning to serve as Principal at a public school in Jaffna. What is distinct in the book is that the Kumaraswamy family were well respected people in the area – cosmopolitan, educated and influential. Sriskanthadas captures those routine moments with great detail and warmth.Īgainst this backdrop, Krishanthi’s personality and family life come alive. A review of the book by Philip Radmall, Macquarie University, says that ‘it speaks from the precariousness of ordinary life how randomly the horror of the killings takes place out of the domestic context and routine goals of a day’. While the burden of war was punishing, the people continued with their daily rituals and routines – their attempts to maintain normalcy in an otherwise abnormal environment. Peppered through the book are cameos of life in the North which are familiar to someone who has grown up there – bicycles (a common mode of transport in Jaffna) and the history behind them, the meaning of the Thali Kodi for a Hindu wife, Saraswathi, the Goddess of Learning and Krishanthi’s affinity to her… Sriskanthadas’ powers of observation are heightened by his knowledge of Tamil culture and history. He travelled to Kaithady, Jaffna, where he interviewed neighbours, relatives and friends of the Kumaraswamy family while compiling the book. Sriskanthadas writes with the clinical accuracy of someone who had poured over the court proceedings and researched conditions in Jaffna during the war, but writes with the heart of someone who understands and appreciates the Tamil culture and ethos. In his foreword he also describes the many human rights violations committed during the war in Sri Lanka and the absence of any Governmental measures to curb the military or hold them accountable for the atrocities they committed. He listed Rwanda, the Congo, Yugoslavia and more recently, Ukraine as countries where rape was systemic during conflict. Speaking at the launch, Sriskanthadas a former human rights lawyer, journalist and solicitor at the Aboriginal Legal Service in Australia, described the atrocities of war and rape in particular, as a weapon of war. The book was launched at Gleebooks in Sydney on 5 June 2022. It follows the crime through the court case and the proceedings some of which are produced ad verbatim in the book and provide first- hand accounts of what transpired. The rape and murder of the schoolgirl by the army and the murder of her mother, brother and neighbour who went looking for her in September 1996, has been graphically captured in a book written by Bhagavadas Sriskanthadas ‘Schoolgirl Rape & Four Murders’. ![]() Krishanthi remains the face of the horrors of the thirty year civil war in Sri Lanka and the tragic victim of the militarisation of the North.
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