Silence behind a virgin

I was reading a news article from Bangladesh about a young girl and her mother got pregnant when they were in the refugee camp at Vavuniya, Sri Lanka. It made me so angry because I was sure that the rapes were done by Sri Lankan forces. However I was not sure about the whole story and about two women. After sometimes, I went to Sri Lanka during my summer vacation and got a chance to visit to the exact place where those two rapes were take place. I was so eager to meet those two women. Somehow I have found them with the help of a NGO which was working at Vavuniya with women issues during the war time.
When I met them I was about to cry because the daughter was 12 years old and she was so young and having two children on beside her. I was speechless and I took sometimes, to return to normal world. She started to say the story that what was happened to her. Basically, I did not ask her to tell to me the whole story. The reason why she wants to tell to that story was that she wants her situation to spread all over the world and she wanted to be a role model for rest of the girls to stop the violence against women during the war time. Beside that she has mentioned that she does not want to fellow her mother and she wanted to speak up. Then only I realize that I was missing her mother and I asked about it. She said her mother suicide right after the baby born and now the little girl has to take care of the two children. Then I start to think that how the military forces have been taking advantage of the young women during the war time. They took every opportunity to sexually harass women – from looking, to staring, to touching, to raping and beating and insulting. I can’t call these attitudes anything but animalistic
She continue her story by saying that she has moved from her birth place to Vavuniya due to the last period of Sri Lankan civil war and stayed in the refugees camp with the hope that she will have good education in the new place and she will take care of her mother because she has lost her father during the civil war. “All the hopes have vanished away within 10 minutes because of them” (Girl) said. I got shock in the middle and I asked again them? She was answering me by saying that “I did not in the situation to count them “(Girl) she started to cry and cry. I felt that crying questioning my status of begin a woman in term of gender and sex.
I do not want explain further more about her story because it is really sensitivity and I do not have the courage to put in the words right now. I really feel shame on myself that I do not able to do anything to stop the violence against the women during the war time. However, I strongly believe that we will make the world peacefully without any violence against women by empowering grassroots women to speak up each and every incident like the small girl who has I met. At this point, it is pointless to believe on the government to make the policies or take action against the violence over the women since government has a part of the creating violence against women and promoting the violence more and more.