MUSINGS:

Story of seven women

by Padma Edirisinghe

According to population statistics of the island, females predominate males. The writer is not sure whether this mirrors world ratio too and anyway that fact has hardly any connection to the matter about to be dealt with.

The matter in hand, to be rather foolishly pompous is, "Are they happy?", I mean all these humans. Both men and women. Even if men are not happy overall, they try to be happy especially since they own many devices to be so (again generalizing). Number-wise they are less prone to personal misfortunes as things are or at least they take them 'on the bump'. But the women more likely to roost in their home and hearth just relish in wallowing in their misfortunes which are perpetrated on them mostly by the males. No other gender exists to harass them and no generalizing this time.

Seven

Take the case of the Seven Women (spotlighted in Daily News of Nov. 24, 2015). They are not from Sri Lanka. They seem to be not from Scotland either, though Scotland Yard, according to the news item is involved in playing the angel's role to the Seven. Why should such a famous institution step in? Because it is a very serious matter. Read on to gauge the grave dimension.

Actually their predicament comes only second to that of the 'Comfort Women of Japan'.

Remember them? Some of them, in their 80s and 90s, still roam the earth hunchbacked and partly blind and on crutches...But back in the 1940s when the Second World War was in full swing and the land of cherry blossoms was exuding fumes of aggression, they were vivacious young lassies selected to act as comfort women to Japanese soldiers stranded here and there on military assignments.

Youth

Perhaps the lassies pink-visioned with the exuberance of youth, relished the jobs never bargaining for a lonely old age since many a male was reluctant to marry them.

Today their popular pastime, as far as their feeble limbs allow, is to join street parades vilifying the Japanese govt. for making a torrid mess of their lives.

Now we come to the Seven women, again a miniature replica of that earlier drama in some way. This time under-cover officers are playing the game of extricating services via sex.

This is quoting a passage verbatim from the source.

"Scotland Yard has made an unreserved apology to seven women who were tricked into relationships with undercover officers, 4 years after the women launched legal action against the police."

The police has been in action over the case even earlier by paying substantial amounts of compensation to the women who had relationships lasting up to 9 years, leading to the birth of a child in one case!..Just ponder on the woman's misery. She has begot a child by a man who was only doing his duty as an undercover officer.

An officer of the Met Police, Hewitt by name, has this to say about the situation, "some officers acting undercover ........ entered into long term intimate sexual relationships with these women, which relations can be described as abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong".

Violation

Goes on he, that these relationships were a violation of the woman's human rights, an abuse of police power that culminated in significant trauma.

Hewitt apologizing on behalf of the Metropolitan Police admits that money alone cannot compensate the hurt and humiliated feelings of the women involved. He goes on to explain that this kind of relationship should never have happened for they are a gross violation of personal dignity and integrity.

The women themselves in the absence of an alternative have voiced their sentiments this way, "Although no amount of 'sorry' or financial compensation can make up for what we have endured, we are pleased at the acknowledgement by Police of the abusive nature of these relationships".

They however emphasise that such relationships should never be staged again for 'by linking the cases together we have been able to evidence a clear pattern of abusive and discriminatory behaviour towards women, that amounts to institutionalized sexism by the Police'.

Institutionalized Sexism - What a bombastic term, yet how horrid!