The horrors faced by women in Mullivaikal- as told by the doctor who witnessed them

*Name shortened

Recently, warzonewomen spoke to one of the doctors who worked with limited medicines, blood banks and equipment to try and save the severely wounded during the height of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009.

46-year-old Dr Maran discussed his experiences in his humble flat in London where he lives with his wife, who also served as a nurse in the north-eastern region of Mullivaikal and their three children.

"I have no words to describe what I’ve seen" he says.

The region was supposed to be a government-designated ‘safe-zone’, but was faced with constant shelling and lack of supplies.

British Tamils marched in remembrance of the Mullivaikal massacre in Glasgow and London in May this year.

He and his family live in the UK as Asylum seekers and he now works in marketing, yet it is clear Dr Maran is haunted by his experiences working at Udayar Kattu hospital in Mullivaikal.

He points to a photo above him and says ‘these two people died in the shelling’, referring to his mother and father-in-law.

He and his family protected themselves with the use of makeshift bunkers but had numerous brushes with death during their time in the region.

Although it is clear that reliving those terrifying moments is painful, he says bluntly "people need to know what we’ve been through".

He discussed the ill-treatment experienced by ordinary women during the war, most notably, he mentions the case of Krishanti Kumaraswamy, a teenager who was raped and killed by army soldiers in 1996, her mother, brother and a family friend were also killed after searching for her.

Although this case eventually went to trial, Dr Maran says ‘By 2009, there were many Krishantis’. Before the mass bombings occurred, the women of the area were already haunted by numerous incidents of sexual violence.

Dr Maran suggested that the locals knew rape was happening, but no woman who experienced it ever said a word.

"I’m too embarrassed to talk about some of cases I have heard about" he said.

Even at checkpoints, men and women had to strip naked before entering various regions.

"A woman holding a one-month-old baby is not likely to be smuggling in a weapon, but the army would strip-search her regardless" he says.

The horrors faced by the women of the area undoubtedly increased during the mass shelling of 2009. The ship to remove people from the area carried 400 people at a time and came once a day, but no preference was given to pregnant women, for example.

New mothers suffered severely from the lack of food, in an area where everyone was malnourished, mothers could not produce breast milk for their babies.

Government agents only provided a small amount of rice for families to survive on. Women suffered from dehydration in the heat.

"They wouldn’t drink water because they had nowhere to go to the toilet" he said.

This combined with excessive sweat lead to a large number of urine infections among women.

The most graphic of Dr Maran’s memories is the story of a shell hitting a pregnant mother’s stomach, her twins came out and although he tried to save one of them, all three died under horrific circumstances.

Holding back tears, he says "When the NGOs left we knew no one would save us."

In response to questions about the prospect of greater rights for Tamils, particularly women in Sri Lanka, he says bleakly "I think it’s impossible."

In a heated moment at the end of the meeting he describes Sri Lanka as the worst country in the world, one that will be forever-tainted by twenty-six years of conflict.

Our interview ends with him simply saying "the question we now have to ask is, how did the world sit back and let this happen?"

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