Rape laws in statute book not enough

Sri Lanka is going through a period where the demand for the protection of women's rights has been unprecedented in our history. We have a woman as an all powerful executive president, another woman , one of the most senior politicians of our time, as prime minister, a Ministry of Women's' Affairs, the Women's Bureau and innumerable private organisations ,whose prime objective is the protection of women's rights. In this respect The Island pats itself on its back for breaking new ground and having the first Gender Columnist, in Sri Lanka unlike other newspapers which stick to the Women's Page devoted to the domesticated women's activities such as cooking, sewing and child bearing

This situation is quite in contrast to what existed to three decades ago when women played the traditional role of being obedient wives and good mothers. For reasons right or wrong , women have given up their traditional role( some may say biological role ) and come out into the open and are competing with men and demanding for equal rights. This is a global phenomenon.

The paradox however is that in this age where there is the growing consciousness of women's rights and equality, never in history have women been harassed, abused , raped and killed as is happening in this country right now in this country.

Yesterday, on the front page we had a report which quoted a Police Headquarters spokesman saying that as much as 900 cases of rape were reported to the police in 1997. Considering the reluctance of women to go public on sexual offences committed on them for very well known reasons, it could be assumed that this figure is a mere fraction of the rape cases committed in the country.

The recent foul murder and rape of an Indian beauty queen on the Modera beach, has received wide publicity in the media. But there must be hundreds and even thousands of cases of rape being committed on poor defenseless women who would have suffered in silence and not even reported the crimes to the police.

The Island report quoted Justice Ministry officials saying that introduction of tough anti-rape and sexual offences laws had failed to reduce the numbers of such offences that have been committed.

Academics, gender and human rights activists and the like have been at the forefront of the movement to enact such legislation. But it is commonsense that laws in the statute book will not prevent the mentally demented, sadists and sex maniacs and the like from committing such crimes. These laws will have no bearing on the poor factory girl returning to her boarding house or the woman office worker going home after dark. The laws have to be implemented by the police in all their rigour if the objectives of the law makers are to be achieved.

This situation once again reflects the inability of the police to give adequate protection to the public despite it being the fundamental reason for the police force to be in existence. It is indeed supreme irony that in this age where a mere suggestion to a woman could lead to a sexual harassment charge, women are being raped by the thousand each year and the police seem unable to take preventive action.

Sri Lankan women being subjected to extreme harassments and indignities is evident to any person on the road today. Armed policemen are seen at every important junction in Colombo but they appear to be immobile zombies. Perhaps they are meant only for ' security' work. But the public, particularly women got to have much greater protection . Special squads and mobile patrols in mufti are obviously needed to save women from sex perverts in public vehicles. Perhaps women police stations with women only manning (sorry, womanning?) them as Benazir Bhutto did when she was Pakistan's premier could help.

The fact has to be admitted that the police in recent times have failed miserably in protecting the public. Only yesterday, we commented about the galloping crime wave. The quality of policemen now in the forceindicates that their training falls far short of required standards. The attitude of the average policeman seems to be: 'Don't create unnecessary problems for me'.

It is likely that more people,particularly women and children will fall victims to sex maniacs and the like each day but the police appear to be helpless or do not want to take preventive action.

Whatever the difficulties faced by our woman president, her fundamental obligation to her Sri Lankan sisters is to make the police implement the laws that were enacted to protect women.