Some of their sisters fell to bullets; some others took to arms. Five years after the war ended in Sri Lanka, these women refugees from the island nation are now learning self-defencewith the help of an NGO.

 

Fear and insecurity have been a part of Sharmila’s life. Sharmila* was only 10 when she encountered men dressed in military clothes carrying guns on her way to school. “Sometimes, they would come to school and ask us to join the LTTE. Some of my schoolmates joined them” she says. That was in 1990, when Sharmila and eight family members left Vavuniya, a town in the Northern Province, to reach Vellore.

 

Having lost relatives to the civil war, Sharmila knows that self-defence training will go a long way. And so do other women working at the NGO, OfERR ( Organization of Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation) in Navallur, which on Saturday trained women and men refugees from Sri Lanka in self-defence.

 

“We read of so many incidents in newspapers where women are abused, so I wanted to learn how to keep myself safe,” says 22-year-old Vidu*. The workshop, which included students from nearby government schools, was conducted in Siruseri by Ashwin Mohan, a self-defence trainer. Men were trained on how to help in a situation if they found a woman being attacked.

 

For 40-year-old Asanka*, the sounds of gunfire and bombs still ring in her ears. Asanka, who fled Trincomalee in 1996, says, “We walked through forests and could hear shots being fired in the distance.” She had to leave her ailing mother behind when she and her family escaped to India.

 

“I still get scared when a firecracker goes off. But this class has given me confidence. I want to go back to Sri Lanka and teach the techniques to other women,” she says.

 

These women now want to take challenges head on. Kicking and ducking, they show their prowess, even if it means wearing track pants underneath a neatly-draped sari.(canindia.com)