Sunila Abeysekera on One Billion Rising

Sri Lanka needs to rise. The injustice is too deeply set– it’s time we snapped out of the apathy and made some noise.

Investigations of the Wijerama gang rape victim is against the victim. Yes, you read that right. It was reported that the police suspect she’s a sex-worker and so her claim of being raped has got to be false. Yes, that’s the logic of those who have been appointed to protect us. Where’s the justice for women? Double that with ineffective laws to protect women, and you’d see that women in Sri Lanka are not safe.

Sunila Abeysekera spoke to Beyond Borders on why Sri Lanka should join One Billion Rising.

Video- filmed and edited by Megara Tegal in Nepal. 

South Asia is Rising

What’s One Billion Rising (OBR) and why should you rise?

Kamla Bhasin, world famous feminist writer and activist, who’s leading OBR in South Asia– gave us a quick interview on the worldwide campaign.

Video- filmed and edited by Megara Tegal in Nepal.

One Billion No More

One Billion Rising has been launched in several countries, and on Sunday Sri Lanka joined the growing list.

Women in Need conducted a walk the same day that led to Galle Face where OBR Sri Lanka  was launched, with motivating speeches from inspirational women, street theater, song and dance.

Pic by Tehani Ariyaratne

Pic by Tehani Ariyaratne

At Galle Face for the launching of OBR Sri Lanka!

Pic by Megara Tegal

Street theatre performance about VAW

Pic by Megara Tegal

The engrossed audience

Pic by Megara Tegal

 

We Are Rising

We support this and we’ll be at Galle Face for the launch of One Billion Rising in Sri Lanka.

Yes, one billion exceeds our 20 million population. And that’s what’s startling. See, the UN has discovered that 1 in 3 women become victims of gender based violence everyday. With a world population that stands at 7 billion, it equates to ONE BILLION victims each day.

One billion women and girl-children are subjected various forms of gender based violence, from catcalling to rape. So Eve Ensler, the founder of the bold plays ‘The Vagina Monologues’, decided to create a movement to raise awareness. Her plan is get one billion people– men, women and children, to protest against gender based violence leading up to 14th of February 2013.

Each country that has pledged their support of OBR has launched the campaign in their respective countries. Sri Lanka will join them on the 25th of November (this Sunday). And that’s what the flyer is about.

So join us at the launch of OBR Sri Lanka and show your support.

Day: Fourteen

This image is free of copyrights. Feel free to use this image to raise awareness about gender based violence.

Day Fourteen features a photograph by the BB team.

Fists Don’t Listen

by Abdul Halik Azeez

Fists don’t listen in my blurry state

I’m a dog without a home

My psyche can’t love; slave to a world

that never throws me a bone

The system rules the outer world

My task is your sustenance

The system makes me sub human

And my mind is past its penance

No, my fists can’t hear your blurry love

My fists are our survival

I’m angered by your garb of innocence

With no jungle nor a rival

So I beat and beat away from me

How incorrect can I prove you?

And somewhere inside I know it’s wrong

But ‘right’ is nothing I am used to

The economy’s gotten my humanity

My failings have gotten my heart

And what’s left of my morality

has gone without a spark

An animal inside human flesh

A clam a parrot an idle jest

Life is just a lark

And all I see is dark

The poem was inspired by a news clipping i read long ago about a retired champion heavy weight boxer. His son had given an interview saying that his father would come home drunk some nights and slam his mother (the boxer’s wife) with a combination. Anyone who’s watched boxing knows the power a heavyweight puts into a hard combination (a series of hard punches meant to destroy an enemy). Now imagine that combination slamming into soft, yielding flesh. imagine them pulping brittle bone. The bone of a person that loves you, or they would have undeniably left by now. I think men who beat their wives do so out of a sense of deep frustration about they way they are treated in the world. About how their illusions of reality don’t play out the way they think they should. Their ambitions are thwarted again and again and they have no moral or spiritual framework to release the tension. It is undoubtedly a failing of the man concerned, but it is also a societal disease, this shouldn’t happen in a healthy God fearing society.

Halik

Watch this blog for the next 2 days. We’ll be posting a featured photograph each day till 10 December as part of WMC campaign against GBV.

For more information about this campaign click here

The photograph concept was thought up by Halik– a board member of Beyond Borders. With the help of the BB team, a borrowed camera, bad lighting and a few doughnuts- the featured photograph was captured. Halik is a board member of Beyond Borders and blogs here when he is not bumming out or being a journalist/economist.

Day: Ten

This image is free of copyrights. Feel free to use this image to raise awareness about gender based violence.

Day Ten features a photograph by Hyshyama Hanim.

Call it what it is. Despite decades of grappling with gender based violence issues, the world still lies to itself, culture still sets up excuses, society still believes in myths around abuse, violence and discrimination of women. You and I are still trying to understand its root cause. No it is not her so-called meekness, his so-called inherent anger, her dress, his alcoholism, her behavior, his lust. It is perceived ‘power’. This fueled by patriarchal ideology, fermented in societal practice and belief. To eliminate it, is to start from the root. Call it what it is.

– Hyshyama

Watch this blog for the next 7 days. We’ll be posting a featured photograph each day till 10 December as part of WMC campaign against GBV.

For more information about this campaign click here

Hyshyama is a guest contributor. She loves ink sketching and is pretty good with a camera. She blogs here. Her opinions are her own.