RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Child Abuse Victims Can Give Video Testimony

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jul 7 1999 (IPS) - Child abuse victims in Sri Lanka may soon be able to give videographed testimony instead of in open court, according to path-breaking legislation scheduled to be introduced in Parliament, Wednesday.

Lalani Perera, Additional Secretary to the Justice Ministry, told IPS that the aim of the new law is to protect children from the traumatic process of giving evidence in open court, often against their parents, guardians or employers.

The new legislation will however not change other rules of cross-examination, she said.

Child abuse is a serious problem in Sri Lanka and is evident in a range of activity which includes sexual exploitation and domestic child labour.

Rights groups say most child abuse cases are heard in juvenile courts in Colombo where victims, lawyers, judges, police prison officers and abusers congregate.

“The child feels further traumatized in such a situation,” says Mallika Ganasinghe, Sri Lanka’s national programme coordinator of the International Labour Organisation International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO-IPEC).

In an attempt to assess the nature and magnitude of child labour, ILO-IPEC is funding an 18-month study ending in December by the government’s Census and Statistics Department to ascertain the number of children employed in the country.

Ganasinghe says that there is no accurate figure of the number of children in forced labour, while government and non-government agencies quote figures ranging from 25,000 to one million. Sri Lanka has a population of 18.5 million people.

ILO-IPEC also financed a study on legal reforms on child labour that was presented by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a private think tank, at a child labour symposium on Thursday.

The CPA report suggested enactment of separate laws on child rights to raise the minimum age of employment for children to 15 years from the present 14 years and for those under 18 to be prohibited from hazardous or dangerous work.

It also called for more stringent requirements relating to working conditions and enhancing fines and jail terms for employers violating laid-down work conditions.

New constitutional reforms recommended by the government have provisions on children’s rights but the opposition has blocked this legislation in Parliament.

Under current laws, fines for violators of the Employment of Women, Children and Young Persons Act range from a mere 50 rupees to 1,000 rupees.

The government recently brought in tough laws against child abusers, who face terms of up to 20 years in jail, particularly against those convicted of sexual exploitation, but judicial process is slow and cases take long to be completed.

Some foreign paedophiles have been jailed or are on trial in Sri Lanka but Hiranthi Wijemanne, senior programme officer at UNICEF, says serious cases of sexual exploitation by parents, guardians or friends remain unreported.

“Only the problem of foreign paedophiles have been highlighted in the newspapers whereas the growing number of cases of children being sexually abused by their parents, relatives or friends is still under the surface,” Wijemanne said.

Non-government organisations (NGOs) exposing foreign paedophiles have been criticised for dealing only with the foreign component of sexual exploitation which attracts international funding and not the larger local problem.

“Often this is because there is a lot of funding in the campaign against paedophiles by groups which work in countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka,” Prof. Harendra de Silva, chairman of the state-run Child Protection Authority said.

Lack of government resources has hindered implementation. Sri Lanka’s commissioner for childcare and probation, S. Rannuge says lack of resources affects the creation of better institutions for abused children.

“The problem of child abuse is growing rapidly but my budget is the lowest amongst government departments,” he said. But his department is setting up homes in the towns of Panadura, Anuradhapura and Bandarawela to provide specialised case for abused children.

Also of concern is the fact that child abuse victims and

juvenile delinquents are put together in the same institutions, under an archaic law.

When abused children come before magistrates – who are asked to keep them in state-homes until disposal of the case – they are sent to correctional institutions which also have children involved in crime.

“These abused children are exposed to a negative environment and can end up as criminals,” Rannuge said, acknowledging that this was a totally unhappy situation.

Shizue Tomoda, director of Colombo’s ILO office said effective labour reforms were more necessary in Sri Lanka than neighbouring countries like India, Pakistan or Bangladesh where child labour is rampant in the formal and visible sector.

In Sri Lanka the most common form of child labour is as domestic servants in homes. Thousands of children, often between 10 to 14 years, are employed as domestics in urban, middle class homes and asked to handle a variety of duties like baby-sitting, cooking and shopping.

They receive paltry salaries that are only paid to their parents or a guardian. Verbal and physical abuse by the employer and their children is a way of life in these homes.

Many of the laws relating to children are ambiguous or outdated. For instance the Domestic Servants Ordinance presented in 1871 and last amended in 1936 talks of domestic servants hired by the month or receiving monthly wages and refers to women.

Today, the bulk of domestics in urban, middle class homes are children.

The CPA document argues that child abusers can be dealt severally under other criminal laws in issues relating to grievous hurt or assault but the police are lax in applying the general law to child abuse.

Often child abuse perpetrators are hauled up in court, given a small fine or warning and asked to pay small amounts as compensation. This has been the case even in instances where child domestics have been brutally tortured and injured.