The writer-activist now lives in self-imposed exile in Chennai
By M Reyaz, TwoCircles.net,
Sri Lankan woman rights activists Sharmila Seyyid and her family are being harassed for years. Facing attacks in Sri Lanka, where she and her sister used to run a school, she now lives in exile in Chennai, in hiding.
It is noteworthy here that Muslims as a minority in Sri Lanka has been facing ethnic violence for years – there was upsurge in 2014 – under Sinhalese Buddhist majority. Seyyid has been very vocal in her works against several conservative practices vis a vis women. She has already published two anthologies of poems and a novel Ummath that critiques rising conservatism in Sri Lanka, besides highlighting the everyday injustices that Tamil-speaking Muslims face there.
Sharmila Seyyid (Facebook)
Seyyid is a single mother, journalist, activist and writer, from eastern Sri Lanka and is the founder-president of the Organisation for Social Development, established in 2009, a community-based organisation in Eravur.
However, all hell broke loose after her November 2012 interview with the Tamil Radio Service of the BBC that was done after the publication of her first collection of poems Siragu Mulaitha Penn (The women who grew wings) was released in Sri Lanka.
In response to a question from the BBC reporter, Seyyid had voiced the opinion that sex workers may be better protected if prostitution was legalized. This drew a significant backlash from a section of the Muslim community in the area and elsewhere, which was dubbed as her ‘endorsement’ to demand of legalising sex work, considered haram in Islam – or any religion for that matter.
She, however, issued clarification emphasising that she was “…only highlighting a social reality and did not intend to defy Islamic tenets”. She also expressed “regret if she had unwittingly hurt anyone’s sentiments.”
The harassment and intimidation that began in the aftermath of the 2012 interview has resulted in her having to leave the country, and continues to this day, impacting other family members as well, including the English medium school she ran with her younger sister.
‘Problem is not with Islam’
Living in fear for herself and her son, Sharmila Seyyid is hesitant to come in public and hence all attempts to reach out to her have so far been in vain. On April 27, 2015 the Tamil Edition of The Hindu published a brief interview with the author on her new novel Ummath, titled ‘Problem is not with Islam’
Cover of Sharmila Seyyid’s new Novel Ummath.
She, however, tried to explain the context of her comment to the BBC based on ‘ground realities’. She says, “While I was researching on the ground I found a woman who was searching of her lost husband. She told me that one man from her native village told her that he knows where her husband is and took her to Colombo and sold her. She was thus forced into prostitution. She travelled to every camp in order to find her husband’s whereabouts but finally got cheated sexually.” Seyyid added that I came across many women like her and got to know about their lives and problems, which in gist was the reason for her observation to the BBC in 2012. “For this (comment) they abused me a lot, but I have heard lot worse than these in those ground works,” she concludes.
Vilification Campaign:
An Op-Ed article in The Hindu by Kannan Sundaram, Editor of Kalachuvadu, a Tamil monthly in India, and the publisher of Perumal Murugan’s Mathorubhagan, published on April 17, 2015 detailed her plight, starkly titled “Chronicle of a death online”. The article was later reproduced on April 19, 2015 in Sri Lanka’s The Sunday Times as well as the Sunday Observer.
According to this article, the hate campaign has now gone viral on internet. She got a message from some fundamentalist group asking her to remove all her photos from social media sites, in which her face is not covered. As she refused morphed photographs of her are allegedly being circulated online using filthy languages.
In March, an audio recording that was widely circulated and made news in Tamil Nadu, was of a high-ranking Tamil Nadu police officer in a lustful telephonic conversation with a woman subordinate, but the accompanying photograph in online reports was that of Seyyid’s. According to Sundaram, “It is not clear if this was deliberate or merely an act of negligence. Shocked, but never one to take anything lying down, she condemned it on Facebook and, with several friends, strongly protested against the websites and social media pages that published her photograph. She succeeded in temporarily taking it off the web.”
However, fundamentalist groups and ignorant people from Sri Lanka to India to the Tamil diaspora in Gulf countries are now reportedly circulating the same report online and through WhatsApp, etc.
When TwoCircles.net tried to verify these allegations, we were shocked to see the level of vilification and hate-campaign which are not only sexist but ‘un-Islamic’. Personal photographs from her Facebook and other sources have been illegally taken and put on malicious audio with disgraceful captions in Tamil, using filthy languages. Another falsely says: a Muslim woman was murdered…Tension at Yeraavoor (in Sri Lanka).
Based largely on the Op-Ed of Sundaram, senior Journalist Hassan Suroor recently wrote on FirstPost on the issue although he titled it mischievously Hounded by mullahs: A Muslim woman writer forced to leave home, why is the community silent? According to him, “In Seyyid’s case, though, some liberal Tamil Muslims have joined an online protest but that’s not enough. Contrast this with the strong liberal Hindu response in the PerumalMurugan case. They rushed to support the Tamil writer when he was attacked by Hindutva groups objecting to certain portions in one of his best-known books.”
He is worried that “unchallenged, this “lunatic fringe’’ can also turn against us one day.”
Silver lining:
The silver-lining in this case, however, is that there has been strong counter protest too, expressing solidarity with Seyyid both online as well as in the real world.
Sundaram writes in her piece: “Liberal Muslims are protesting loudly online. Women writers and liberal Muslim writers joined to organise a protest meeting. Under the umbrella ‘Pen Veli’, a discussion forum was launched in Chennai on March 5, to protest the continuing attacks on women by Islamic fundamentalists,” adding, “The speakers categorically condemned the attempts to defame women and Islam by fundamentalist groups. The acts of such groups were condemned as anti-Islam.”
On April 5, 2015 too a group of activists, writers organiseda solidarity protest and programme in Chennai. “Our Prophet has never imposed his teachings even to his family members. Quran says, whoever likes can follow, whoever dislikes can reject,” AloorShanavas, Chennai based writer and Activist who was instrumental in organising solidarity march told TwoCircles.net.
Without defending view with a view, abusing a woman nastily is brutal. It’s not only that a woman is getting affected, but the entire humanity, he added.
April 5, 2015 solidarity programme in Chennai.
In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, a joint-statement has been issued by the Muslim civil society, comprising of over 55 writers, activists, lawyers, journalists, professors, etc, saying, “While we acknowledge that prostitution is prohibited in Islam (as in many other religions), we nevertheless uphold that Seyyid is within her rights and freedoms to express her personal views; and condemn all forms of harassment, intimidation and hatred by vigilante groups and individuals that are justified based on claims to the above.”
The statement further adds, “While we acknowledge and respect that feelings may have been hurt and sensibilities offended, we also categorically state that defaming, harassing and inciting violence against a person for holding a different opinion, in this case a woman, is unacceptable and not within the spirit of the faith, and can also be deemed a contravention of the law.”
These Muslim civil society activists also urged the Sri Lankan authorities to bring to book those who have been harassing and intimidating journalist and social worker SharmilaSeyyid for her opinion on rights of the sex workers.
These activists noted that if people feel themselves to have been wronged, due process should be followed to seek redress, adding, “This event highlights the critical need within the Muslim community, and also in the country at large, for developing processes to respond to critical issues, not through vilification, harassment or violence but through a process of dialogue that is in keeping with the law and norms of a democratic society and respectful of different faiths and ethics.”
While urging the community leaders and civil society actors of the Muslim community to “continue to play an active role in upholding the rights of every citizen,” these noted members of the Muslim civil society also urged the clerics and religious leaders to take steps to halt the targeting of fellow Muslims based on spurious religious justifications.
(Chennai based Journalist Azharudeen Hamza did additional reporting and helped in translating Tamil texts, locating Photos and Videos online.)