Was the Ramayana actually set in and around today’s Afghanistan?

 An examination of a book by physicist Rajesh Kochhar debunks the notion that the events of the epic took place in modern-day India.

History is said to be the original discipline in the faculties today known as humanities. This is owing to the fact that every discipline in knowledge discourse has a history – even abstract disciplines like mathematics or astronomy – and every piece of history has a geophysical contextuality.

Ever since Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC, Greek-occupied Turkey) started the discipline, he recorded events during the reign of four Persian kings and chronicled life and society in their times. These were times of conflict between Greece and Persia and had a geographical contextuality.

Herodotus also speaks of “India”, where he saw the Himalayan marmot bathing in gold dust. Much later, deconstructing his text led to the conclusion that the great father of historical praxis must have passed through the North West Frontier province and reached the base of Hindu Kush.

This posed a question, which Herodotus did not ask himself: if he had indeed travelled to “India”, which “India” was this? For that matter, if he was “Greek”, which “Greece” did he live in? Similarly. if Ram of the epic poem Ramayana was an “Indian”, where was this “India” situated?

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The so-called Ram Setu
A ship that wishes to sail from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal has to pass through the Indian Ocean to the south of Sri Lanka. The voyage would have been 30 hours shorter if it could have travelled along the Gulf Of Mannar, which separates India and Sri Lanka, but this isn’t possible. For there are thousands of small submerged rocks beneath its surface, stretching like a bridge across 47 km between the two countries. As a result, the sea is between one and 30 metre deep here, which isn’t favourable for sailing.

The British government of colonised India as well the government of independent India had often planned to dredge the channel to make it suitable for sailing; but the plans have remained elusive for various reasons. At present, for instance, Hindutva followers believe that this is the bridge built by an army of monkeys, as described in the Ramayana, which Ram and Lakshaman crossed to conquer Sri Lanka.

Their demand is that, far from dredging, let the Archaeological Survey of India declare this bridge a national monument. Not that the colonisers were any less fundamentalist. In 1804 a certain British cartographer named the structure Adam’s Bridge – according to him this was the bridge described in the Bible which Adam crossed to scale a mountain peak, where he meditated for 1,000 years while standing on one leg.

Even before this, we have seen Marco Polo describe the structure as a bridge, as did Al-Biruni in the book he wrote in 1030 CE. In other words, it has long been held that this row of rocks beneath the surface of the water is a bridge.

Not exactly a bridge
According to geologists this structure is actually a limestone shoal, the outcome of natural processes. Between 300 and 30 million years ago, a portion of the Indian subcontinent is believed to have broken off because of continental drift to form the island of Sri Lanka. The debris that this fragment of land left behind at birth in the water as it drifted away led to the creation of this so-called bridge.

It may have jutted out of the water at some point in history, in which case it might have been used as a bridge. But there is considerable doubt whether the users belonged to the age of the Ramayana. This is because the inhabitants of Sri Lanka went directly from the Stone Age to the Iron Age; the use of copper was not very prevalent here. On the other hand, the Ramayana is a tale from an advanced Copper Age – an epic in verse from a period two or three thousand years before the Iron Age.

Where was Ramayana set?
Let us drop the preamble and get to the point now. If the Lanka mentioned in the Ramayana was not the Sri Lanka of today, where was it located? Where did Ram belong, for that matter? Wherever he may have lived, he was certainly not an inhabitant of what is the Ganges valley today, or of “Ramjanmabhoomi” Ayodhya. For, civilised man did not live in the forest-infested Ganges valley before the Iron Age, since there were no axes with which to clear the vegetation before iron was discovered. There were no swords either, which proves that the Ramayana, unlike the Mahabaharata, is not an epic of the Ganges valley. It makes no mention of swords – the bow and arrow are the primary weapons in it.

The primary objective of this essay is to point to the geographical location of the Ramayana. It is not the writer who has arrived at the answer, nor an Indologist like Max Mueller or even a historian or archaeologist. The person in question is Rajesh Kochhar, a physicist with an inclination for history, who has broken through the traditional techniques of history in his work The Vedic People – Their History and Geography.

How the Ramayana is different from the Mahabharata
The primary difficulty of discussing the ancient history of India lies in the necessity of first demolishing several well-established inaccuracies, such as the Aryan Invasion Theory, for instance. Spun by white men and broadcast by colonial historians, this old wives’ tale is still taught in schools and colleges, with half of any written work – measured in terms of paper, ink and effort - being expended on it. We shall not entertain it. We will only examine whatever can be determined through the social and geographical pointers available in the Ramayana.

There are two other fundamental differences between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata – in the rivers and in the divine pantheon. In the Mahabharata the Ganga and the Yamuna are almost ubiquitous, but they’re completely missing from the Ramayana. In the Mahabharata we see the powerful presence of the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar – but they’re absent from the Ramayana. We do not find these two rivers and these three gods together in the Rig Veda.

However, the rivers and gods that are to be found in the Rig Veda are also to be found in the Ramayana – the rivers Saraswati and Sarayu, and the original trinity of Agni, Varun and Pavan. From this it is easy to surmise that the Ramayana is a Rig Vedic epic. Which period was this? It would not be correct to estimate this using our current calendar: it would probably not be possible either. An approximation can be made from the sequence of events.

The somras clue
Vedic nomads travelled from the Eastern Europe to Bactria (present day Afghanistan). From here they went to Persia (today’s Iran). During their migration to Persia there was probably a battle for power amongst the gods, which led to the birth of the Avestan religion. As a result, Indra, the king of gods, became an inferior figure in the Avesta, while Yama, the god of death, turned into the finest of the gods. Worshipping Agni is a prominent practice within the Parsi community, but Hindus do not worship this ancient god. This indicates that the Rig Vedic age predated Persia. Kochhar has provided clues to whether this was the Afghan branch of the Vedic journey.

The first such clue that Kochhar alludes to is the Vedic drink somras. It was so important in ancient Vedic life that an entire mandala or chapter of the Rig Veda has been devoted to it. The importance of soma is evident in the Avestan Zend scripture – it is referred to as haoma in Persia. It is seen that the closer the Vedic nomads get to the Indian peninsula, the more they seek continuously new alternatives to the soma plant; that was how important somras was.

But the original soma plant was to be found only in what is modern day Afghanistan and Persia or Iran. In 1951 the German historian Karl Friedrich Geldner proved that the ephedra plant was what was described as soma in the Rig Veda. Ephedrin or somras is not alcohol – this intoxicant is an alkaloid. Kochhar’s investigations led to the discovery of four varieties of ephedra, found in Afghanistan, Iran, the northern Himalayas, and the Hindu Kush.

What we learn from summer solstice
There are 49 cosmic hymns in the Rig and the Yajur Vedas whose meanings have not been explained. But one particular hymn from Vedanga Jyotish informs us that the longest day of the year, or summer solstice, comprised 18 periods of daylight and 12 of night. Day and night are of equal length on the Equator; in the higher latitudes, summer days are longer than nights.

The latitude at which the proportion of daylight and darkness is 3:2 is 34 degrees North. It is worth noting that the cities to be found around this latitude today are Herat and Kabul in Afghanistan. In other words, the place and time of the composition of the Vedanga Jyotish is the same as that of Vedic Afghanistan and Iran. This second piece of evidence offered by Rajesh Kochhar further strengthens the perception of the location and time of the Rig Veda.

In search of the rivers
Kochhar has deconstructed the Rig Veda in search of the Saraswati and the Sarayu, the two rivers also mentioned in the Ramayana. Here too our current history has come in the way.

There is a tiny river named the Sarayu in Uttar Pradesh, which flows into the Ghaghara, which in turn merges with the Ganga. Many people consider the rainwater-fed Saraswati in the Aravallis, flowing along the Ghaggar (not to be confused with the Ghaghara) basin the mythical Saraswati. On viewing the scans of North-Western India made by the Russian Landsat satellite between 1972 and ’79, it is natural to assume that the Ghaggar was a wide river. It flows into the Rann of Kutch.

The scan reveals the basin of a dried up older river, which is up to 8 km broad in some places. It was this that led to the hasty conclusion of this basin’s belonging to the original Saraswati.

From Neil Roberts’s The Holocene it is clear that the basin of this river widened to the north of the Rann of Kutch because of the accelerated movement of a glacier during the previous Ice Age. But deconstructing the Rig Veda doesn’t suggest any of this. The Saraswati has been referred to as non-perennial towards the end of the Veda. The original stream of the Ghaggar enters India from present-day Pakistan, drying up in the Thar desert. Kochhar believes this is the non-perennial Saraswati.

However, the Saraswati of the Rig Veda is extremely powerful, grinding rocks with sheer force. Its roar subsumes all other sounds. And the Sarayu of the Rig Veda is immensely wide and deep, the mother river. None of these descriptions matches the actual rivers in present-day India with those names.

Hymn No. 5 | 53 | 9 of the Rig Veda says, “May the Rasa, Krumu, Anitabh, Kuva or Sindhu not be able to stop you; let the deep Sarayu not be an obstacle.” The order of the rivers clearly moves from east to west. So the Sarayu undoubtedly flows to the west of the Indus.

Kochhar believes it is the 650-km river known as the Hari-Rud in Afghanistan, whose source is in the Hindu Kush mountains. It flows past the city of Herat and then for 100 km along the Iran-Afghanistan border before disappearing in the Karakom desert of Central Asia.

In the Avesta we find the Saraswati as the Harahaiti – the similarity in sound is noticeable – which enters Iran along the combined basin of the river Arghandar on the Afghan-Iran border and the river Helmand. According to Kochhar, it is this Helmand that is the Vedic Saraswati river.

The source of the Helmand is in the Koh-i-Baba mountain range. Flowing for 1,300 miles through the heart of Afghanistan, the Vedic Saraswati joins the Vedic Drijadbati or Arghandar. The Avesta identifies this wide river as the Hetumanta (or, in varations, as Setumanta). In Iran the Saraswati is named the Harahaiti, which flows into the inland lake Hamun-e-Sabari in the Saistan area of northern Iran.

The conclusion
The political map of the ancient world, of the Copper Age, provides an extraordinary realisation. The kingdoms of the two main political powers – the Persians and the Greeks – all lie between and around the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. None of these is a coastal civilisation, however.

This raises a question. What did ancient man refer to as a sea? The Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Campian Sea are all saltwater lakes, and not seas in the way we understand them today. This make us wonder: perhaps the Lanka of the Ramayana was an island in the Hamun-e-Sabri.

The one thing that’s obvious: wherever it was that Ram and Lakshman went from Afghanistan, it could not have been to present-day Sri Lanka, for that would have meant crossing the Indian peninsula. And since Ravana, the lord of Lanka, was also partial to somras, it is unlikely that he went very far from the land of soma after abducting Sita.

Although it is not possible to prove archaeologically, there is considerable reason to assume that the lineage of Dasarath (and of Ram), the Ikshvakus, were from western Afghanistan. For the Puranas say that King Kubalasa slayed a demon on the shore of the Sabari. Vishwamitra received his second birth where the Saraswati met the sea. And Valmiki discovered Sita on the shore of the Sarayu. This is why there is little room for doubt that today’s Hamun-e-Sabri is the sea mentioned in the Ramayana, one of the islands in which was the kingdom ruled by Ravana, lord of the rakshases.

The focus of attention for those studying the lost history of India is the contentious issue raised by Hindutva historians, who have repeatedly asserted that western historians have been unable to identify the roots of ancient India. We find these assertions in the writings of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, as well as in those of certain lesser-known right-wing historians. It is surprising how easily conclusions unsupported by the array of Vedic texts can be arrived at because of mindless adherence to a popular brand of politics.

The rock formation between India and Sri Lanka could well be preserved, but not as Ram Setu or Adam’s Bridge. Let it be protected as a geological feature. For no matter how far one looks, no relationship is evident between this Lanka and the Lanka of the Ramayana.

(Source: Scroll)

A new island of hope rising from the Indian Ocean

 The modern island of Hulhumale is taking shape 8km off the north-east coast of Malé island in the Maldives in direct response to the threat posed by inexorably rising sea levels.

Scattered across the Arabian Sea, south-west of Sri Lanka and India, the Maldives present the face of a dreamy, tropical idyll to travellers from all over the world, who fly in to savour picture-perfect coral atolls fringed with white sand, luxurious resorts and world-class water sport.

We are one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth

But perhaps no other nation faces an environmental threat quite like the Maldives. Its luxury beach resorts may be world-famous, but with more than 80% of its scattered 1,200 islands less than 1m above sea level, rising oceans threaten its very existence.

“We are one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth and therefore need to adapt,” said the country’s vice president Mohammed Waheed Hassan in a 2010 World Bank report that warned how, at current predicted rates of sea level rise, all of the Maldives’ around 200 natural inhabited islands could be submerged by 2100.

The low-lying Maldives islands are threatened by rising ocean levels due to climate change (Credit: Matteo Colombo/Getty Images)

But Maldivians are determined to fight back to preserve their existence. Back in 2008, then-president Mohamed Nasheed made global headlines by announcing a plan to buy land elsewhere so his citizens could relocate should islands become submerged. That plan gave way to considering whether it might be best to work with the sea rather than against it, by building floating urban developments – as has been done in cities like Amsterdam.

Instead, the Maldives turned to a different form of geo-engineering: creating a 21st-Century city, dubbed the “City of Hope”, on a new, artificial island christened Hulhumalé.

Pre-Covid, curious tourists could visit the new island city as it takes shape around 8km from the capital city of Malé by hopping on a 20-minute bus from the airport over the bridge. Yet, few who come to the Maldives on short luxurious breaks will think about the pragmatic social issues Hulhumalé aims to solve. With more than 500,000 inhabitants scattered across the archipelago, delivery of services is one resource-draining logistical nightmare. Lack of job opportunities is another, driving youth unemployment to more than 15%, according to a 2020 report by the World Bank.

As well as the long-term threat of submersion, increasing coastal erosion also threatens the 70% of infrastructure – homes, other buildings and utilities – located within 100m of present shorelines. There’s also worries over encroaching salty seas tainting precious fresh water sources, plus risks posed by unpredictable natural disasters, like the 2004 tsunami that killed more than 100 people in the Maldives.

The new, artificial island of Hulhumalé was built using millions of cubic metres of sand pumped from the seabed (Credit: Hassan Mohamed)

“After the 2004 tsunami, a programme for enhancing resiliency through safer islands was introduced,” explained Areen Ahmed, director of business development at the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) that oversees the City of Hope. 

“Hulhumalé is being developed through careful considerations of climate change in its architecture and communities.”

Ongoing land reclamation using millions of cubic metres of sand pumped from the seabed has raised the new island more than 2m above sea level, while the island’s growing City of Hope is seen as a vital new settlement to relieve the over-crowding that currently blights Malé, where more than 130,000 people cram into 1 square mile (just more than 2.5 sq km).

“Malé is one of the most densely populated cities on Earth,” said Kate Philpot, who worked as a science officer in the Maldives, researching reef fish for the Korallion Lab marine station, before becoming senior ecologist at UK-based consultancy Ecology By Design.

Phase one of Hulhumalé’s land reclamation, consisting of 188 hectares, began in 1997 and was completed in 2002. Two years later, the island celebrated the arrival of its first 1,000 residents. Further reclamation of 244 hectares of land was completed in 2015, and by late 2019, more than 50,000 people were living on Hulhumalé.

The new island will eventually house up to 240,000 people and help reduce over-crowding in Malé (Credit: Mr Sham'aan Shakir- Shammu)

But ambitions for Hulhumalé are far greater, eventually envisioned as hosting up to 240,000 people in well-designed style by the mid-2020s. This vision includes a diverse mix of quality housing, new employment opportunities plus open recreational space three times larger per person than Malé.

According to Ahmed, in contrast to the unplanned and over-crowded nature of Malé, Hulhumalé was designed with many green urban planning initiatives. “Buildings are oriented north-south to reduce heat gain and improve thermal comfort. 

Streets are designed to optimise wind penetration, reducing reliance on air conditioning. And schools, mosques and neighbourhood parks are within 100-200m walking distance of residential developments, reducing car use.” Electric buses and bicycle lanes are also part of the new city landscape.

Varied housing needs are also being catered for. “Hulhumalé comprises diverse housing projects: mid-range, luxury and social housing,” said Ahmed. “Sixty percent of mid-range housing units have to be sold under the pricing ceiling set by HDC.” Affordable social housing is available for specific groups, including single women and those affected by displacement and disasters. There has been detailed consultation to ensure housing and the wider built environment is accessible to those with disabilities.

Enviable digital infrastructure proposals complement green initiatives and social planning, said Ahmed, who describes Hulhumalé as “Asia’s first 100% gigabit-enabled smart city”, with fast digital access for residents based on widespread optical fibre technology known as GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Networks).

Hulhumalé has been designed with green urban planning initiatives and sustainability in mind (Credit: Hassan Mohamed)

“The ultimate benefit of building a Smart City from scratch is that Hulhumalé will be seen as a city of resilience – built by the people of Maldives for the people of the Maldives,” said Professor Hassan Ugail, a Maldivian computer scientist who is helping to make Hulhumalé a smart city, alongside his work as director of the Centre for Visual Computing at the UK’s University of Bradford.

Malé is one of the most densely populated cities on Earth

Hulhumalé aims to tick boxes with regard to sustainable urban development too, including drawing around a third of its energy from solar power and harvesting rainwater to boost water security. Yet isn’t the very act of building an artificial island something harmful to the environment – especially in a place famed for coral reefs and pristine white-sand shores?

When Belgian company Dredging International completed the 244-hectare expansion of the island in 2015, the operation required sucking around six million cubic metres of sand from the surrounding seabed to then transport and pump onto Hulhumalé.

“Land reclamation work is particularly problematic,” said Dr Holly East from Northumbria University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, an expert in coral reef islands with experience conducting research in the Maldives. 

“Not only can it destroy coral reefs, but [it] also creates vast plumes of sediment that travel to other reef platforms. Sediment smother[s] corals and blocks out sunlight, impacting their capacity to feed, grow and reproduce.”

At current predicted rates of sea level rise, all of the Maldives’ around 200 natural inhabited islands could be submerged by 2100 (Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

But with its steadily growing population, land reclamation has become a simple fact of Maldivian life, with existing coral reef providing the obvious foundation. “Efforts have been made to reduce impacts of the development of Hulhumalé, including translocation of some corals,” said Philpot. “However, it can take a long time for them to become established elsewhere – and there is often a poor success rate.”

Yet with her years of experience in the Maldives, Philpot is well aware of competing demands. Tourists may come and go, but local people need land to live on and jobs. She also makes the rather ironic observation that Hulhumalé is rising in an area that has already, to some extent, been spoiled.

“Construction is likely to be less damaging than elsewhere in the Maldives,” she said. “It seems preferable to develop an area with relatively high levels of boat traffic and pollution compared to anywhere else within the Maldives that remains relatively unspoilt.”

In this view, she is backed by the World Bank’s 2020 report, which notes “the Greater Malé Region, particularly in Hulhumalé, do not have significant natural habitats – and the coral reefs are mostly degraded”.

Despite the Maldives’ idyllic reputation, many local children never get the opportunity to go snorkelling (Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

Waste disposal remains a key issue – both in terms of construction waste for Hulhumalé, as well as waste from its growing city of inhabitants. “Much of the waste has been transported and stored in the purpose-built island of Thilafushi,” explained Philpot wryly.

Hulhumalé will be seen as a city of resilience – built by the people of Maldives for the people of the Maldives

Maldivian authorities counter the idea that this is basically a tropical rubbish dump, albeit rather vaguely. “All measures to minimise the impact of construction on the environment are monitored by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) of the Maldives,” Ahmed told me.

While Hulhumalé is being fashioned primarily to improve the lives of Maldivians, its City of Hope also aims to be a beacon for a new cohort of tourists interested in more than just lying in a beachside resort bubble. A 2018 World Finance report, for example, highlights the potential for medical and sports tourism tied into upcoming projects such as the Maldives’ first multi-specialist hospital, water theme park and yacht marina.

Philpot also hopes the dreams driving Hulhumalé will extend to a greater appreciation of their surroundings by the next generation of Maldivians. “I taught coral ecology classes to Maldivian children between [the ages of] 14 and 17 – and more than half my class had never put their faces in the water with a snorkel on,” she said. “Their amazement at what they saw was so exciting – but also sad, that they lived so close to the sea but never got the opportunity to experience being underwater. Perhaps with more direct education aimed at marine biology there would be more interest in preserving and protecting the marine ecosystem amongst the young.”

Rather than just building a City of Hope, in other words, the people of the Maldives are taking an island-building path into the future that could make the Maldives a Nation of Hope.

(Source: BBC)

Qatar temporarily suspends entry for travellers from 14 countries

Qatar’s Government Communications Office said Sunday that in addition to Qatar Airways' announcement regarding flights to and from Italy, entry to Qatar is temporarily suspended for all those intending to travel from certain countries, as of March 9, 2020.

The decision comes as a preventive measure due to the spread of coronavirus, COVID-19, worldwide.

Hamad International Airport (file photo)

The GCO statement said the decision covers the following countries: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria and Thailand.

The decision affects all individuals intending to enter from these countries, including visas upon arrival, those with a residence or work permit, and temporary visitors.

The statement said the step comes in line with Qatar’s efforts to take all necessary preventive measures to limit the spread.

The State of Qatar urges all citizens and residents to avoid all but essential travel at this time.

The statement said that these precautionary measures may be subject revision on the timely guidance of the national health authorities and international organizations on the spread of coronavirus, in order to ensure safety of all residents.

(Source: The Peninsula)

Sri Lanka president admits for first time that 20,000 missing from civil war are dead

Relatives say they handed over hundreds of family members to government forces

Over 20,000 people who disappeared during Sri Lanka‘s bloody civil war are dead, the country’s president has admitted for the first time.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa said death certificates would soon be issued, according to a statement from his office on Monday.

Sri Lanka's civil war, which lasted for 26 years, killed an estimated 100,000 people and left about 20,000 people, mostly Tamils, missing. 

“Most of them had been taken by the LTTE (Tamil Tiger rebels) or forcefully conscripted. The families of the missing attest to it,” the statement said.

“However they do not know what has become of them and so claim them to be missing.”

An Office on Missing Persons set up in 2015 has been investigating 23,586 cases, including those of 5,000 security forces ( ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP via Getty Images )

Mr Rajapaksa made his decision during a meeting with the United Nations’ resident coordinator in Colombo last week, the statement added.

Relatives have been demanding to know for years the whereabouts of the missing, with hundreds attending rallies to pressure the government.

The war, which pitted the majority Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated government against the Tamil Tigers, ended in 2009 with the defeat of the rebels, who had been fighting for an independent state for the country’s ethnic minority.

Scores of fighters went missing in action, while others were abducted by security forces and government paramilitaries, as well as the Tamil Tigers.

Relatives say they handed over hundreds of their family members after government forces asked those with any remote links to the rebels to surrender as they faced defeat in 2009.

They say they are not heard from after being taken away by the military in buses.

An Office on Missing Persons set up in 2015 has been investigating 23,586 cases, including those of 5,000 security forces.

A law enacted in 2016 mandated that an interim report be given to the relatives if there is sufficient evidence the relevant person is missing. At the end of an investigation a final report will be given to enable the relatives to obtain a Certificate of Absence or a Death Certificate as per the outcome.

It was unclear how Mr Rajapaksa’s government came to the conclusion all the missing persons were dead. Mr Rajapaksa served as a top defence official during the war.

(Source: Independent)

After 16 years in Japan, Sri Lankan woman still classified as an exchange student

Long-time residents struggling to become long-term residents under ministry's strict rules

Dakshini Siriwardena never expected that the failure of her father’s business in Japan would leave her with no choice but to live here as an exchange student — despite having resided in the country for more than 16 years.

“It’s ridiculous that I had the same education as a Japanese and have grown up in Japanese society, but suddenly I’ve become a foreign student,” the 21-year-old Sri Lankan said.

The legal status of the children of immigrants in the nation is highly dependent on the economic stability of their parents. No matter how long they have lived here, if this stability is threatened, their legal status, too, can be in danger.

Sri Lankan national Dakshini Siriwardena, 21, talks on Skype with her younger sister, Pamalya, who left Japan after her father's business failure, on June 6. | CHISATO TANAKA

Dakshini, along with her mother and two sisters, accompanied her father to Japan at the age of 5. They lived here under dependent visas issued to spouses and children of foreign workers who meet certain requirements.

She attended school in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, and eventually made it into Chiba University, where she is majoring in comparative culture studies.

But her world was turned upside down in 2017 when her father’s trading company went bankrupt and the Justice Ministry revoked his visa after he was caught working part-time illegally.

Her father, mother and sister Pamalya, 10 years old at the time, were all forced to leave for Sri Lanka.

For just the third time, the Japan-born Pamalya would be returning to her family’s ancestral home, this time to live.

“It was heart-wrenching to see my sister crying as she left for Sri Lanka,” said Dakshini. “She told me that nobody cared about her future. I’m still haunted by those words.”

Sri Lankan national Dakshini Siriwardena, 21, talks on Skype with her younger sister, Pamalya, who left Japan after her father’s business failure, on June 6. | CHISATO TANAKA

No longer able to stay in Japan under a dependent visa, Dakshini and her older sister applied for long-term resident visas the same year, hoping to continue living in the country independently. Eventually, they hoped, they would be able to bring their younger sister back to live with them.

In 2015, the Justice Ministry began issuing long-term resident visas to the children of foreign workers who had been living in the country since at least grade four under dependent visas, provided they meet certain requirements. These include the completion of their primary and secondary education in Japan as well as having a place of stable employment.

The ministry refers to people who meet such conditions as “those who have significant ties to Japanese society” in the document released to local immigration bureaus.

The ministry initiated the project to make children of foreign workers eligible for full-time work after graduating high school, as those on dependent visas are only allowed to work up to 28 hours per week.

But both Dakshini’s and her older sister’s applications were rejected for not meeting the requirement of having a job or a formal offer for one.

“In the case of dependent visas, people have parents whom they can depend on financially, but when it comes to long-term resident visas, they have to be financially independent and prove that they would not be a burden on the Japanese taxpayer, so having a job is a requirement,” Justice Ministry official Naoki Yano said.

The system means that even those with jobs but not high school diplomas — no matter how long they’ve been in Japan — face deportation if their parents decide to leave the country for good.

Take Omit S.K.M., a 21-year-old Bangladeshi who has been living in Japan for more than a decade. He was at risk of deportation when his father’s workplace went bankrupt. Because of the difficulty in finding a new job at his age, his father decided to return to Bangladesh in May last year, leaving Omit in a kind of limbo.

Without a high school diploma, Omit was not qualified for a long-term resident visa even though he had a job offer. In the end, Omit was able to stay in the country thanks to a spousal visa. But before this, he expressed his exasperation with the system.

“I know that not finishing high school is a downside, but I work hard and even have a job offer. And I want to continue working hard,” Omit, who is fluent in Japanese, said before his status was resolved.

Ureshi, his 16-year-old sister, is also ineligible for a long-term resident visa as she is still in high school. But she was lucky enough to find a Japanese guarantor to financially support her, enabling her to qualify for a foreign student visa and continue studying.

According to the Justice Ministry, if foreign workers leave Japan and their children are 17 or younger and wish to remain in the country, the children must find a guarantor who can provide a place to live and support them financially in order to apply for the student visa.

Applicants must also be enrolled at a school with a full-time staff member overseeing foreign students, said the ministry’s Yano.

A total of 182,452 foreign nationals had dependent visas as of December last year. Around 83,000 — about 45 percent — are 18 or younger, most of whom are ineligible to change their dependent visas to the long-term resident status since they have not graduated from high school.

Masaki Akiyama, an administrative clerk who has dealt with Dakshini’s case and five others like hers, believes that, rather than requiring applicants for the long-term residence status to have graduated from high school, the ministry should consider the number of years they have been living in the country.

“I think the cases I’ve been dealing with are just the tip of the iceberg,” Akiyama said. “There must have already been many children of foreign workers who’ve had no choice but to leave Japan.”

Some may believe they’re shoo-ins for permanent residency if they’ve been living here for a long time, but many families have their applications rejected due to low socioeconomic status, Akiyama claimed.

“If a foreign worker is single, the applicant usually has to earn at least ¥250,000 monthly and ¥3 million per year,” he said.

“If the applicant has to support their children and partners financially, those figures are higher.”

The ministry says it does not set any specific income level as a threshold when examining applicants for permanent residency. But, according to Yano, a stable income is the most crucial prerequisite for applicants. Family size, and whether the primary breadwinner is able to support them, are also taken into account, he said.

This has left some children of departed foreign workers disillusioned.

“I speak Japanese fluently and all the friends I grew up with are Japanese,” Dakshini said. “I never thought I was doomed to be in this situation because of my parent’s business failure.”

Under the rigid regulations, Dakshini, who switched her visa status from a family dependent visa to foreign student status to be able to keep studying at university, is also no longer eligible to apply for a long-term resident visa — even if she gets a job offer after graduating.

“My entire history of living in Japan has been erased,” she said. “I feel like I was rejected by the country.”

The Siriwardena family’s story also serves as a cautionary tale for mothers and fathers living in a foreign country.

While those who stay in Japan without their parents risk living on legally unstable ground, children forced to leave with their parents also face challenges in starting a completely new life from scratch.

Pamalya, Dakshini’s little sister, for example, returned to Sri Lanka barely able to speak the language and unable to write it at all.

“Learning Sinhalese is really difficult … so many things happened all at once,” Pamalya said in Japanese. She declined to elaborate further, citing painful memories.

Sri Lankan national Dakshini Siriwardena, 21, talks on Skype with her younger sister, Pamalya, who left Japan after her father’s business failure, on June 6. | CHISATO TANAKA

Hideyuki Taura, a professor at Ritsumeikan University’s Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science in Kyoto, warns that those who are suddenly forced to switch from their first language at an early stage of their lives might end up being “double-limited,” or lacking a high level of fluency in both their native tongue and a second language.

“Those who are double-limited usually can speak both languages fluently at the conversational level, but can hardly comprehend difficult essays and can only write childlike sentences,” Taura said.

Children need to study in their first language until at least grade four to avoid such situations and acquire cognitive academic language proficiency — the essential skills that allow people to communicate using academic language, according to Taura.

Double-limited people have little chance of overcoming their condition unless they are able to re-examine the mistakes made at lower education levels, Taura said. Often, they just try to hide their difficulties and tend to find jobs or schools that fit their cognitive levels.

“I’ve had students who were like that,” he said. “It’s a heavy cross for them to bear forever.”

Dakshini said her little sister is still recovering from the shock two years after leaving Japan.

“She grew up eating Japanese rice, but can barely finish a bowl of local rice in Sri Lanka,” Dakshini said. “Whenever we Skype, she asks me what I ate today and she gets jealous of me eating teishoku (set meals with a bowl of rice).”

Pamalya, now living with her mother, said that she wants to live with her sisters again in the future, if possible.

But that dream appears as far off as ever.

“I’m sad that I can’t live with them anymore,” she said, avoiding Dakshini’s gaze.

“I miss my sisters.”

(Source: JT)

Sri Lanka’s first ever satellite is named after the ultimate villain of Hindu mythology

In the Indian subcontinent, issues and events often have a mythological subtext or context, be it in politics, science, or other fields. References to tales, characters, and messages from ancient texts and scriptures can be found sprinkled beyond the modern-day international borders of the region.

Even then, Sri Lanka’s first ever satellite, launched on June 17, stands out. The predominantly Buddhist island nation, named the 1.05 kilogram payload Ravana-1, after the biggest villain in Hindu mythology.

In the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, Ravana is the mighty king of Lanka and the leader of the Rakshasa clan. While some dispute the assumption that the Lanka mentioned in the poem is the same as today’s Sri Lanka, it has underpinned social, historical, and political views over millennia.

Ravana, according to Ramayana’s basic plot, abducts Sita, the wife of prince Rama of Ayodhya. It climaxes in a bloody battle in which the king of Lanka and most of his family are killed and Sita rescued by Rama with the help of an army of monkeys.

In short, the ferocious Ravana is seen as the symbol of evil by many Hindus, while Rama epitomises kindness, justice, and dutifulness. Dussehra, one of Hinduism’s biggest festivals, is celebrated to mark Rama’s defeat of Ravana. In many place in northern India, festivities involve the setting ablaze of giant Ravana effigies, sometimes even in the presence of the prime minister.

“Ram rajya,” or the reign of king Rama, is even held forth by modern Indian political forces as the ideal state to aspire to. Ayodhya, a small town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, has for the past many decades been the epicentre of the Hindu nationalist movement.


However, Ravana himself is not reviled across the board. To begin with, there are multiple versions of the Ramayana—around 300 by one account (pdf)—all of which describe the primary antagonist in various shades of grey. Often the ten-headed king is deemed erudite, just, an able administrator, and an excellent musician—an ancient string-instrument, the Ravana Hattha, is considered his invention. He is also portrayed as an ardent devotee of the Hindu god Siva.

During Dussehra, minor pockets of India even mourn for their king. Though rare, Ravana is also a preferred name for sons among sections of Indians.

Not surprisingly, this paradox also informs regional politics in the country. The late Periyar EV Ramaswamy Naicker, fountainhead of the Dravidian movement of southern India, identified Ravana as a monarch of the ancient Dravidians who mostly inhabit southern India today.

“Although EVR (Naicker) neglects to provide specific textual references, he begins his praise of Ravana by listing the virtues that Valmiki attributes to Ravana: Ravana has mastered the Vedas and sastras, he protects his family and kin, he acts courageously, he practices bhakti, he is the beloved son of a god, and he has received several boons,” Paula Richman writes in the book Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia. Valmiki is the poet who wrote one of the earliest versions of the Ramayana.

In many ways, this difference in perception of Ramayana and Ravana extends to Sri Lanka. While the island nation is developing its own “Ramayana trail” to woo tourists from India, Ravana himself is a hero for Sri Lankans, especially among its minority Hindus.

All this adds intrigue to the naming of the country’s first satellite.

“Are we seeing a soft power project or subtle weaponisation of myth and religion in the context of a concerted extension of a Rāvana Trail and narrative in post-war Sri Lanka where Rāvana and large Hanuman (Ramayana’s popular monkey god) statues, which are often out of sync with the softer, gentler and smaller local aesthetics and religious sensibilities are popping up in the post-war northeast of Sri Lanka, as India extends her soft power globally and locally, while grandiose Buddhist statues are also popping up?” a columnist asked in the Colombo Telegraph a few months ago.

(Source: Quartz)

How Sri Lanka's arrack coconut spirit went upmarket

Distilled from the sap of the coconut flower, Sri Lankan arrack has been a local favourite for centuries. But now its makers are trying to take the spirit global, writes the BBC's Ayeshea Perera in Colombo.

Sri Lanka's arrack producers are trying to take the spirit upmarket

It's served in some of London's most fashionable restaurants, like Dishoom and Hoppers.

And the late food and travel writer Anthony Bourdain described it as tasting like "a marriage of bourbon and rum, but with a stronger, burning kick and a mysterious bouquet".

Yet the makers of Sri Lankan arrack - best described as a dark coconut rum - believe it is still punching far below its weight when it comes to international recognition and appreciation.

For years, arrack was considered too "low class" to be taken seriously as a premium alcohol, even in Sri Lanka, whose elite in the capital Colombo preferred Scotch whisky, wine or rum.

Arrack is distilled from the sap or toddy of the coconut flower, which is still harvested by hand

Arrack's makers have also had to survive multiple Sri Lankan governments who have taken the view that while necessary for revenue, the local alcohol industry is a terrible influence on society, rather than a business that ought to be nurtured.

Distilleries are therefore subject to heavy taxes, and advertising spirits is prohibited by law.

Despite these impediments, attempts to raise the quality and profile of the drink at home and overseas appear to be paying off.

Premium versions of arrack have found lucrative markets both in Sri Lanka and other countries, where it is marketed as a smooth, artisan spirit that can be either drunk neat, or used in cocktails.

Amal de Silva Wijeyeratne, the managing director of the country's oldest arrack producer Rockland Distilleries, is at the forefront of these efforts.

He passionately points to the fact that quality arracks are made from just two ingredients - coconut flower sap (known locally as toddy) and water.

And for him, it's in his blood.

The sap ferments naturally after it has been harvested

His great grand uncle, JBM Perera, is credited with completely changing the way the drink was distilled and blended, when in 1924, he accepted a British government contract to produce arrack on a commercial scale.

His innovations, including the procurement of a custom-made still from a French company, helped transform arrack from a crude liquor into a smoother and more sophisticated drink.

Mr Wijeyeratne says he is trying to continue that legacy of innovation.

Part of this was his company's introduction of an upmarket, barrel-aged blend called Ceylon Arrack, which he says has been made to appeal to drinkers around the world.

And it is making some significant inroads in the global market.

Working as a "toddy tapper" collecting the coconut flower sap is not for those who are scared of heights

First introduced in the UK back in 2002, which Mr Wijeyeratne calls the "toughest liquor market in the world", he says that Rockland now sells more Ceylon Arrack to British buyers than those in its home market.

The brand is now also sold in countries like Singapore, Germany and Japan. And there are plans to launch it in India this year.

Singaporean bar Native uses Ceylon Arrack in one of its cocktails, and its owner and head bartender Vijay Mudaliar says it has been a bestseller ever since they introduced it.

"Arrack is a beautiful spirit. The taste profile is very fresh and clean. Aged arracks are definitely a viable choice for any dark spirit drinkers."

There is no way of really knowing how long Sri Lankans have been drinking arrack, but it is believed to be one of the oldest spirits in the world.

Rockland is Sri Lanka's oldest commercial producer of arrack

According to Mr Wijeyeratne, that's because "God has already taken care of the fermentation process".

What he means by this is that the toddy ferments of its own accord, because it contains both natural sugars and yeasts.

As soon as it is collected from the trees, it's a sweet, slightly tangy white liquid. But the fermentation process is rapid and its alcohol percentage increases in just hours to around 6%.

It is then distilled like whisky or brandy to an alcohol level of more than 60%, before water is added to bring that back down to 40%.

Global Trade
However, collecting the coconut sap is not for the faint hearted.

In a process that has remained unchanged for generations, men known as "toddy tappers" twice a day shimmy up the unnervingly tall coconut palms - a fully grown tree can reach 60m (200ft) - to collect toddy from the unopened flowers.

Sri Lanka's four major arrack producers - DCSL, IDL, Mendis and Rockland - employ hundreds of tappers on their vast coconut estates.

With each tapper given a group of trees to look after, they stay high above the ground for hours, using crude rope bridges to move between trunks.

Together the four firms produce about 60 million litres of arrack a year, in different grades and mixes.

The price and quality of arrack has a lot do with the percentage of actual toddy in it.

While the premium versions are made from 100% distilled sap, cheaper blends - which are somewhat erroneously called "Extra Special Arrack" - are usually also made from molasses, a form of treacle.

Sri Lankan arrack has become increasingly popular both in Sri Lanka and overseas

Some of the most basic versions of arrack can actually contain as little as 3% toddy.

Although lower grade arrack still accounts for almost 70% of sales in Sri Lanka, the premium versions are making Sri Lankans feel that they can take pride in the drink.

"Many Sri Lankan CEOs I meet tell me that they don't travel without a bottle of arrack as a gift for their high profile international clients," says Mr Wijeyeratne.

He adds that changing the perception of the drink continues to be a slow but rewarding process.

"It takes years and years. You have to be willing to go for the long haul."

"It's still going to be a long time before arrack gets the attention and recognition it deserves."

(Source: BBC)

Unsubstantiated claims Muslim doctor sterilized women raise tensions in Sri Lanka

On May 23 Sri Lankan newspaper Divaina, known for its nationalist stance, published a front page article alleging a Muslim doctor had secretly sterilized 4,000 Sinhala Buddhist women after caesarean deliveries.

The doctor, who was not identified in the article, was also described as a member of the National Thowheed Jamath, one of two local Islamist groups blamed for bombings that killed more than 250 people in hotels and churches on Easter Sunday.

Reuters has no independent evidence to support these claims.

The article was produced roughly a week after Buddhist mobs in the North Western Province of Sri Lanka had destroyed Muslim homes, stores and mosques in rioting triggered by the coordinated bombings in the capital Colombo and two other towns.

Divaina’s editor-in-chief, Anura Solomons, told Reuters the paper’s story was based on police and hospital sources, whom he said he could not identify.

Allegations a Muslim doctor might be forcibly sterilizing Buddhists are particularly incendiary on an island where hardliners within the Buddhist majority have accused Muslims of seeking to use a higher birth rate to spread their influence.

Two days later, a doctor, Segu Shihabdeen Mohamed Shafi, was arrested. Police said he was accused of acquiring properties with money of a suspicious origin. Police are also probing the sterilization claims and have called on any potentially affected women to come forward.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told Reuters Shafi was charged under a money laundering act, but declined to provide further information on the financial charges he faced or the sterilization claims.

Shafi’s lawyer, Faris Saly, said the probe was flawed because the authorities did not call for evidence of sterilizations until after Shafi’s arrest, adding that all the allegations were unsubstantiated.

Shafi is a prominent physician in the province’s Buddhist heartland of Kurunegala, a district with a high concentration of army personnel and the constituency of nationalist ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa, now the leader of the opposition.

A general view of a hospital where women wait to make statements and complains against Muslim doctor Segu Shihabdeen Mohamed Shafi, who was arrested after accusations of secretly sterilising Buddhist women during their caesarean deliveries inside a hospital in Kurunegala, Sri Lanka May 31, 2019. Picture taken May 31, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

The case has further raised the temperature in the area, with monks from the majority Sinhala Buddhist community protesting against Shafi in front of the Kurunegala Teaching Hospital where he works.

“If these allegations are proven, it will show that they want to destroy the Sinhala race,” said Pradeep Kumar, a 38-year-old driver waiting in a crowded hospital hallway as his wife lodged a statement detailing how Shafi had delivered their daughter by C-section 11 years ago.

He added the couple were concerned after hearing about the case as they had been trying unsuccessfully to have a second child for six years.

FAMILY SAYS ALLEGATIONS FALSE
Shafi’s family said he was being framed.

“He is being targeted because of political problems and jealousy. I cannot exactly tell who it is, but there is a group,” said his wife Fathima Imara, 43, a kidney doctor at the same hospital.

In an interview, Imara described her husband as a devout Muslim and caring physician. He has not been a member of a militant group, she said.

Shafi was also a smart investor, she said, using earnings from his hospital work and a family-owned medical testing center to amass stakes in some 10 properties.

It would be impossible to surreptitiously block women’s fallopian tubes during caesarean sections, when a half-dozen staff members were on hand, she added. The hospital’s director, Dr A.M.S. Weerabandara declined Reuters’ request to interview Shafi’s direct colleagues, saying they were busy.

Meanwhile, Imara has stopped working and pulled their three children from school. She said her husband, whom she visited at the Colombo Criminal Investigation Department on Saturday, was being treated well, but that his mood was dark.

“From time to time, he is crying,” said Imara.

Weerabandara said the hospital started investigating the allegations of mass sterilizations following media reports.

More than 600 women have lodged statements about Shafi, that hospital authorities refer to as “complaints,” since the accusations were made public. Several told Reuters they simply wanted to be checked.

“I saw Shafi was arrested and people were complaining so I thought I would also,” said homemaker Amali Konara, 32, whose son Shafi was delivered by C-section in March.

Weerabandara said the women who have come forward had not been medically examined yet because the hospital was still receiving statements. He was unable to provide a timeline for the testing, which he said was complicated and required planning.

POLITICAL UNDERTONES?
The newspaper article was amplified on the day it was published when a pharmacology professor in North Central Province, Channa Jayasumana, wrote about the allegations of Buddhist women being sterilized without their knowledge in a Facebook post alongside a picture of Shafi - the first time he was publicly linked to the claims, his wife said.

Jayasumana told Reuters he spoke to 20 doctors who identified the doctor mentioned in Divaina as Shafi. Jayasumana declined to provide the doctors’ contact details but said he passed on their information to police.

The post, which was shared more than 1,200 times, had a photo of an article in which Shafi said he had performed some 8,000 caesarean sections in his career. The post also highlighted that Shafi had stood for office for a Muslim party.

Shafi did unsuccessfully run in a 2015 parliamentary election with All Ceylon Makkal Congress, a Muslim party allied with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party.

Jayasumana told Reuters he was a health policy advisor to the party of former President Rajapaksa, who is a rival of Wickremesinghe. But Jayasumana, a professor at the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, stressed Shafi’s case was not political.

Rajapaksa, the local MP, has called on authorities to compensate potential victims.

Hilmy Ahmed, vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, said the Shafi accusations were largely “stage-managed” by Rajapaksa supporters to create anger at the government ahead of this year’s presidential election. He was not able to provide evidence to back his statement.

Rajapaksa rejected the accusations, stressing that complainants were speaking out independently.

Neither Wickremesinghe nor President Maithripala Sirisena have publicly spoken about the case, which has provoked a media storm in Sri Lanka. They declined to comment for this article.

(Source: Reuters)

Sexism, slander, hatred: Sri Lanka’s culture of online abuse

From politicians to members of the LGBTQI community, social media in Sri Lanka is a hotbed of harassment and hostility

The threats began after Jegatheeswaram Jeyachandrika decided to contest local government elections.

Clutching a file of printouts, Meena, as she is known, points to a Facebook post in which she is pictured, circled in red, among a group of people.

“We opened some new shops that day, part of a collective project,” she says. “This post implies that I’m the mistress of one of the ministers in the photo.”

That was one of the milder offerings. Meena has been called a sex worker, among other things, and hateful comments have been made towards her immediate family. Several volunteers helping with her campaign dropped out following the repeated threats.

Stones have been thrown at Meena’s house, and flyers containing defamatory claims against her have been distributed. She went to the police, but received no response to her complaints. As with the Facebook posts, there have been no consequences for the perpetrators.

A mobile browser unable to connect to Facebook after Sri Lanka’s government shut down the platform in response to unrest following the Easter Sunday attacks. Photograph: Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP/Getty Images

“Unless people take action, how are women to move forward?” she asks, adding that such incidents only push women out of politics. Despite the recent implementation of a 25% quota for female representation in local government in Sri Lanka, significant barriers to equal political participation remain.

But Meena’s story also highlights the pervasive nature of online violence in Sri Lanka – and the inability of state mechanisms to respond effectively to it.

Researchers have found that, in Sri Lanka, a culture of casual sexism, misogyny and objectification prevails on Facebook, which is by far the country’s most widely used social media platform, with more than 6 million users as of 2018. Leaked intimate photos and videos of young girls are also shared on the platform.

“Boys befriend girls and coerce them into sending them their nude photos. Once the relationship goes bad, they leak them online … 17-year-old girls have taken their own lives over cases like this,” says Ananthi*, an activist.

In Sri Lanka, where same-sex relationships have not yet been decriminalised, members of the LGBTIQ community also face threats including surveillance, extortion, discrimination and online sexual abuse and exploitation.

Sometimes this surveillance occurs at family and community level, but rights organisations such as Equal Ground have also reported intimidation, violence and discrimination against individuals and groups on the basis of sexual orientation, both offline and on social media.

Facebook has also been used to amplify hate and misinformation. Following the devastating suicide bomb attacks on churches and hotels on Easter Sunday, the government responded by twice blocking Facebook and Facebook-owned platforms Instagram and WhatsApp. It first adopted this approach in March 2018, in the aftermath of riots targeting the Muslim community, claiming that this helped to curb hate and misinformation. However, research shows that people have found ways to continue posting online.

In April 2018, 13 Sri Lankan civil society organisations wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, expressing “deep frustration” over the platform’s “little to no support” for attempts to report content on gender-based violence, violence against the LGBTIQ community and hate speech, particularly in local languages like Sinhalese and Tamil. Facebook responded, promising to increase content reviewers and work with government and civil society to curb hate speech and better understand the local context, including training their staff to identify inflammatory content in local languages, especially Sinhalese.

Yet the problem persists.

Sri Lanka’s own penal code has several sections that can be used to address different aspects of technology-based violence, and it is a signatory to a number of international conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“Various government bodies together with civil society partners are in the midst of conducting research on prevalence and varied manifestations of cyber harassment and violence,” says Hans Billimoria, director of the Grassrooted Trust. “That said, civil society partners on the ground and those at the forefront of the struggle against gender-based and intimate partner violence still lack the information they need to fully support victims and their families.”

Those who do report online violence often get no response – that is, if they know where to go in the first place. The main body tasked with dealing with such issues, the cyber crimes division of the criminal investigation department, is based in Colombo, and those living outside the capital have to travel there to make a report. Those reporting instances of leaked intimate images said the insensitivity of officers handling their cases often caused fresh trauma.

Meena says her experiences left her needing counselling. “I expected nearly 1,000 votes [in the election]. Because of the slander and harassment in real life, that number fell by more than half. Now, I’m left with my 333 votes, and a file full of printouts of the harassment that I have received online.”

• Name has been changed

(Source: The Guardian)