That controversial filmmaker Prassanna Vithanage of Purahanda Kaluwara fame (notoriety?) once spoke in an interview about the proliferating practice of prostitution and pimping in Anuradhapura and areas similarly situated in close proximity to the conflict ridden North and East. But even he fought shy of making a film about it.
Then came this current peace lull. There is suddenly this newfound interest in the lives of the people of the North and the East and the immediate borders.

There is so much interest in the fate of children affected by the war that someone said recently that it is time to "save the children from Save the Children.'' The once bombed and grenade-hit Norwegian "Save the Children'' bosses need not worry about the suggestion. It is made in a metaphorical sense.

It is metaphor for the sudden and almost voyeuristic interest that the international community and the do-gooders have shown in the lives of those affected by the Sri Lankan conflict. This so-called sex industry in the border areas has been known for a long time. It catered mainly to the soldiers. It is also known that there was tacit encouragement of the brothel trade on the part of the armed forces. That's nothing new either. Almost all major military installations in the United States or instance, have established brothel communities in adjacent towns, even though prostitution is illegal in all of the United States except in the state of Nevada.

The women in the border areas and in many of the rural Sri Lankan sector - border or otherwise - are impoverished. Even if they see prostitution ( …I eschew the more sanitized term 'sex-worker'' here on the same grounds that "sex industry'' sounds too much like "cottage industry'') as an economic opportunity, they still can't find much space to practice that vocation in the capital of Colombo which has been saturated with Russian, Thai and an abundance of urban Sri Lankan women plying the trade. Therefore these women saw economic opportunity in the red lights districts of Anuradhapura, situated right there in the sacred city within a stone's throw from the Sri Mahabodhi.

The authorities stopped a thermal power plant in Anuradhapura on the grounds that it will endanger and pollute the Sri Mahabodhi environs. But the authorities could take no such steps to outlaw the proliferating incidence of prostitution. The "industry'' acquired a momentum of its own, with the state seeing almost a moral obligation in "looking after'' the soldiers.

Now, they think the war is over. In times of peace the prostitution racket in Anuradhapura is in fact ebbing. The soldiers are coming home - at least they are coming home more frequently - so they do not have to resort to the stopover at Anuradhapura. But, yet, these are the times that are good for the international community to make their own pit stop in Anuradhapura, to document the strange goings-on within this esoteric culture in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. So the sociologists come in droves, the media come in gallons, and then there are do-gooder NGOs and just plain white people, mostly, who are shocked and conscience stricken by all this wretchedness in human lives in war torn Sri Lanka. There is an intense anthropological curiosity that is reserved for such people, whose lives are made so miserable that they offer the happiest hunting grounds for Western voyeurism.

But this post-conflict (or between conflict) voyeurism is not limited to the subject of prostitution. Everything from hungry children to pock-marked post offices are subject to the rigorous scrutiny of the gaping voyeur who is thunderstruck by what conflict can do. It doesn't matter that what they are seeing are not lives that are in the process of being ruined. They are seeing lives already ruined, like ruins in Anuradhapura. These are lives that are already done for. They were being ruined during the war, but nobody was there. Prostitution of course is only the ultimate subject for the post conflict anthropological voyeur.

Last time around when there was a peace lull, there were hotels and businesses coming up all over the country because there was an expected 'peace dividend' and a time of post conflict economic activity. But this time there is more a peace chill than a peace lull. Ceasefire violations and previous bad experiences in peace making have had a chilling effect on the peace.

This time around therefore is a time for being touched by the human deprivation in this war. Even if you can't invest in business they say, you can always invest in human lives. In the NGO jargon, they call it social capital!

So now is the time to make capital out of social capital. These stories will be there for sometime now in Western glossy magazines, NGO websites, and home pages of white women looking like Kim Basinger in Dockers. Yes, they always do their good work in Dockers too. As far as Sri Lankans are concerned they just have to connive. The rehabilitation effort needs money and attention, and even if there is some of that coming in tangible terms, what a price one needs to pay! The wretched and the humiliated have to pay the price of being gaped at probed and spotlighted. For the prostitutes - well they are now the subject of intense international natter, like their sisters in Thailand, who are still for the most part being patronized by the affluent men from the West and neighbouring South East Asian countries.

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