The Sunday TimesPlus

23rd February 1997

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Sri Lanka has the highest suicide rate in the world.Why?

The need of the hour

It is not for us to categorise, differentiate and prioritise, since, for each of these victims, their issue comes first, their grief the most and their pain the worst.

Undoubtedly, the above mentioned are amongst some of the many critical areas of concern today in Sri Lanka. But ask the common man, about what's uppermost on their minds, about what comes first for the country. The answer will definitely be War. It's the unspoken accepted reality of the day to day lives of Sri Lankans. Everyday we hear about casualties, the brave men who lay down their precious lives. Unfortunately we have got used to hearing, about the displaced, the homeless, the handicapped, the maimed - all legacies of the ten year old war, which has crippled Sri Lanka economically, socially, culturally and internationally. We rarely know or talk about the grief of mothers, fathers, wives and other loved ones, who have lost their sons, brothers, husbands in the battle. Do we care about our own people living in the border villages, who for the past 10-12 years have been spending every night with their families in the nearby jungles in order to avoid sudden tiger attacks? But only for a moment. We do care! We care for the moment we hear about it, if we happen to read about it, or see it on T.V. Our senses have atrophied.

Is it that, we have lost the capacity to feel for, care and help our own brethren, the victims of war? Or is it that we care more about our safety on the roads, at work, at the market, shopping malls.... in busy Colombo and the suburbs, that we forget that there are people more at risk, in far away corners of Sri Lanka? Should we compare the recent Mullativu catastrophe with the Dehiwela railway station bomb blast or the Central Bank blast or other atrocities both in the battle front and outside? Will it help us, the Mental Health Professionals to realise, the extent of trauma, inflicted upon the victims, whether they are dead or alive? Because, for us, victims are not only the people who have died, disappeared or got injured or their immediate families. Victims are the people who escaped unhurt, who could have been there but were elsewhere for some coincidental or fateful reason, people who gathered, treated and helped the dead, the injured, the people who heard or saw it on TV - in short all of us are victims of trauma to a certain extent. Do we care?

Again the question arises. Of course, we have the hypocrites, the armchair peace makers, academics who are more concerned about the research aspect than the humane aspect, the racists and other sorts of people who are a part of any other nation who hold their selfish ends above all. But it is definitely the minority, for the majority of us rich or poor, academic or non academic, professional or non- professional, anything to do with war - a lost human life, or the crumbling of the economy is painful.

So, the majority of us, do care.

But the reality is, that our minds have been desensitized, with so much misery, that our capacity to care and help is benumbed. We all are, a nation full of Trauma Victims. No country which has experienced war, can talk only about physical casualties, for mental casualties include the whole population. Therefore of gravest concern are the trauma victims, the victims of war, the distorted, fear ridden, desensitized minds of our men, women and children, the living dead, a nation full of on-going Traumatic War Disorder.

In this light, whilst appreciating the massive effort of the government in ending this senseless war, what actually is the need of the hour? I come to the central issue. What can we do as responsible Mental Health Professionals (MHP)? It is sad, that we are yet to realise the united potential of psychologists, counsellors and psychiatrists at the most needed hour in the history of Sri Lanka. Is it because the MHPs themselves have heen desensitized and benumbed, though they have greater powers than the ordinary citizen to bring themsleves back to a healthy mental state? Or, is it because of the petty differences and professional jealousies which have caused us to hold back the healing we can offer the less fortunate, the families of brave sons of Sri Lanka, the families of the bomb victims, the handicapped, the displaced, the people of the bordering villages, or anybody, who has the need to be healed.

The hour has come to unite! To form a National Work Force of Mental Health Professionals on Trauma Management inclusive of psychologists, counsellors, psychiatrists and volunteers who care to be trained in Trauma Management (TM) from all regions of the country. It is important to get together and plan strategies such as the training of volunteers who can work at the grassroot levels of TM, with special reference to any type of war victim mentioned above.

Here are a few suggestions as to what could be the objectives of the National Work Force of Mental Health Professionals on Trauma Management.

1. Educating the general public (creating awareness) - in the form of workshops, and distribution of' informative leaflets on Trauma.

*a selecled number of school teachers and representatives of work places (government, NGOs and the private sector) can be trained to do this task, specially in major cities and suburbs.

*in rural areas, nurses, public health officers and even grama niladharis can be used to create the much required awareness among people.

(2) Training of volunteers in trauma intervention and management

*a basic training in identifying the trauma victim and intervention of day to day conflict and trauma management.

Note - Training of skillful empathic listening is a must.

Here again for a start we can use a selected number of nurses, preferably and ideally from every hospital in the country, and specially so in the danger zones - the border villages, and train them on basic intervention.

3) Treatment - Psychological intervention in the form of

(a) Counselling

(b) Psychotherapy

Since the available qualified MHPs are scarce we must get together and work out strategies as to how to provide at least one counsellor trained in Trauma Management (TM) who can handle basic forms of psychological counselling and psychotherapy specially in the affected areas in the North and East and other difficult areas .

Note; Different strategies should be used in order to minimize the traumatic effects of war in places such as danger zones (border villages) refugee camps or re-settlement areas for the previously displaced. Some of these people may be more concerned about their physical safety than alleviating their mental trauma - Therefore the National Work Force of MHPs on TM should study the issue thoroughly and identify their priorities.

It is a good idea to organise workshops and training and awareness programms using a selected crowd of international and national experts on Mental Health. But it should not be limited only to Colombo or suburbs.

So let's unite, forgetting petty differences and plan together in setting up the national work force of MHPs on TM Professionals in Trauma Management.

Let us remind ourselves, every day that all of us are victims of mental trauma, not today, tomorrow and for many more tomorrows to come.

ln war nobody wins - whether it is fought in the minds of people, or physically out in the battle fields, in a war everybody loses.

(Courtesy: Mental Health)

That long road to justice

Earlier this month, the Kesbewa magistrate convicted a foreigner of child abuse, sentencing him to two years rigorous imprisonment, the maximumpenalty that could be imposed for this

offence. Here Maureen Seneviratne who heads the voluntary organisation PEACE traces that arduous legal battle

In Sri Lanka, where our Penal Code is a heritage of British colonialism and is based on the Roman Dutch Law, inherited from the Dutch, a person accused of a crime is, innocent till the Prosecution proves him guilty.

Based also on the new humanitarianism that began to pervade the thinking of the European peoples in the mid-nineteenth century onwards, factors such as bail for an accused person for all crimes except a murder charge or treason or for waging war on the State, was allowed.There was also a gradual tilt towards de-criminalisation of the law which is evident in Sri Lanka today

Crimes committed against children are on the Penal Codes of every country in the world. Today with sexual crimes against children, even babies, becoming common in every part of the world, it is yet permissible for a man or woman arrested and accused of such a crime to rove free with the onus of proving guilt on the Prosecution who have abused, children to bear witness to their own shame and violation.

At the time we started to trail X, convicted recently for crimes of unnatural offences on a minor boy- child, in our court at Kesbewa and sentenced to a two years term of rigorous imprisonment (the highest a magistrateÕs court can award for these crimes), the old, antiquated laws were in force. These were laws of 1883 unchanged and un-reviewed for 112 years.

We had little hope he would even be arrested, leave alone brought on trial. But the work of child right activists even in a country like Sri Lanka where the Convention on the Rights of the Child is hardly known and where Òroad childrenÓ (as their abuser designated them )have no ÒrightsÓ at all, can eventually bear fruit

The information that a house on the salubrious edge of a lakeside was a house of horror was brought to us by some residents in the area several years ago. We were told that something suspicious was going on in the house.. There were many scraggy boys hanging about the house and garden and it is so odd, our informers said, to see such children in a palatial mansion. ÒA palatial mansionÓ: that is the kind of accommodation a man can afford when making money perhaps out of renting rooms to other child abusers. A palatial house and garden is the least of their possessions: the most useful and lucrative are the children themselves.

Working with the community leads to results, a child activist could truthfully claim. People are enlightened, warned, and encouraged to report any criminal activities occurring in the so-called "placid and peaceful" areas where they reside.

Our pursuit was long and hard. The Police had to enter and raid the place and find proof - which they did. X and another man were arrested and kept in remand. This was two years ago. According to our laws they had to be produced in court within 15 days. The criminal abuse of minor children is yet a bailable offence in Sri Lanka. The two boys, at the time of their arrest when the old law was in force, were also allegedly criminals. They were sent to a detention home.

We began our regular monthly treks to court. There we sat watching the proceedings, and taking notes, assisting the Prosecution every way we could, We had no prior experience of Òlegal monitoringÓ. We only knew we cared about those two small boy-children there in the dock, hardly reaching their heads above it, sucking their thumbs, tears in their eyes. Of what were they guilty? Of being poor and vulnerable and victimized.

ÒAh,Ó said X chatting me up one morning in the garden of the Kesbewa court-house, Òwhat is all the fuss about? They are road children. I give them food and clothes and good shelter, comfort, so what is wrong with a little sex?Ó

Domestics working in that house of horror told us how they had heard the children screaming fearfully in the dead of night, ÒDaddy! Daddy! DonÕt hurt us!Ó Rubber penises were apparently inserted into the rectums of those children to Òmake them usedÓ to receiving the real thing!.Ó

We were determined to sit there in that court every time the case was called and make our presence known. We wanted to Òwatch the interestsÓ of the two children as best we could though we had no legal aid to offer them as Òaccused persons.Ó The case was called twenty two times during a prolonged trial with dozens of postponements for one reason or another. The two children were sentenced to two years in a detention home and placed under probation.

Then a strange thing happened. They ran away. It was probably at the instigation of their ÒDaddyÓ, who was free to visit them and maybe even bribe them. For such victims a few sweets will do and may be even a drugged chocolate? Who knows?

In December 1995 the two boys were re-arrested. We were there when they were brought to court again and sentenced to detention. This time - in another Home,from which they ran away the very next day, right into the arms of their abuser. So powerful it seems is the influence the abuser wields over the victim-child. And anyhow neither of those two boys had any real home to go to. The mother of one we were told is a dumb beggar on the street at Mount Lavinia junction. The other child is from the slums of Colombo Five.

We continued to follow in the tracks of X. We saw him in several places, always with a child or two.We conveyed this information to the police and to other childÕs rights groups, We felt only exposure could help to bring such people to book. We received various threats.We learned to live with them but we did not feel heroic at all! We started to look over our shoulders!

Time was going by and it seemed the case against X was never going to end!

We had sat over twenty times in that , rustic courthouse, on a worn, wooden bench,decorously, as one should sit in court with oneÕs knees close together and properly clad. Even if X came in a pair of Bermuda shorts or dungarees we had to sit like the women in The Tale of Two Cities, DickensÕ famous Tale of the French Revolution, except we were not knitting to pass the time while we watched the head roll from the guillotine! No head rolled there in Kesbewa, only fines and prison sentences were being given for the common or garden crimes people committed. But child abuse is no common or garden crime. The law has to take its course, we were told. The legal machine has to take its own course and time. And then, suddenly, it was the 22nd time we were sitting in court when it all came to an end. The long trail, the endless tracking was over. We had won! The State had won! A landmark verdict. The children were vindicated. X was sentenced to two years rigorous imprisonment, the maximum sentence the Magistrate could give.

An appeal against this sentence has been filed as everyone has the constitutional right to do so.

Continue to Plus page 3 - Cooling effects in water colours * Chamber concert * From piano stool to Spitfire cockpit

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