When the Indian army raped Tamil women in Eelam, they didn’t violate their bodies but also left scars that outlives lifetimes.

Subtitle: It’s impossible to understand how anyone can wear the identity; “Indian” without confronting this truth and feeling the weight of shame.

Here’s a true story of how the Indian’s war dogs attacked a Family in Tamil Eelam fueled by rage and violence. These Hindu monsters came into Tamil Eelam under the false pretense of neutrality. This so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force came not as saviours, but as beasts. Their violence against human dignity was just one of the thousands of atrocities our people were made to suffer.

The Indian forces; savage beasts presented as soldiers that went on to commit atrocities on a young woman.

She was 22 years old, a student. Her father was partially blind. The whole family lived with her brother, who ran a shop in Silapaththi.

Since her mother had been involved in temple prayers from January 24, 1988, she would bring food to her every day. The temple was located very close to the house where they lived. It was customary to take food in the middle of the night to break the fast.

On the day of the incident, January 29th, the young woman was bringing food to the temple with her father. On the way, four Indian soldiers stopped them and asked for their identity cards. They tortured her for a long time under the pretense of interrogation. They started their negotiation by asking simplistic questions of;

What time is it now?
Why are you walking alone at this time of day?

They ordered her father to be seated on the edge of the pathway, and then ordered the young woman to walk alone towards the shrine opposite the temple.

Realizing the horrors that were to come, she tried to protest, but the Indian soldier pressed a gun to her and threatened her to keep walking alone. Another soldier stood beside her father, with his weapon drawn and aimed, while the other three soldiers took charge of leading her forward, controlling her every move.

She understood the cost of resistance. If she dared to fight back, they would shoot her and her father in cold blood and toss their bodies in the street.

By the next day, they’d be branded as “Tigers,” ( Tamil revolutionaries of the armed struggle) and the world would move on without a second glance. The men who stood before her were capable of anything and afraid of nothing.

Near an abandoned hut, they dragged her off the path and into the bushes. She was forced to the ground. One of the Indian soldier kept watch while the others took turns raping her. When they were done, they left her behind, broken, alone and as if nothing has happened.

The next day, she took her ailing father and went to the nearest Peace Keeping Indian army camp to report the atrocities that had happened to her. But instead of help, she was redirected – told to take her complaint to the main Indian camp.

They went to the main camp and filed the report. An identification lineup was conducted, and all four involved Indian soldiers were identified.

She was then told that for any action to be taken, she would need to be examined at a hospital, and a formal report submitted. But the endless back-and-forth, the emotional toll, and the deliberate stalling wore them down. In the end, they walked away from it all — exhausted and defeated.

This is not an exception. Most survivors of sexual violence never even get this far. And when they do get the opportunity to report the crimes against their dignity, they are often dragged through a system cruel indifference that is designed not to deliver justice – but to break their will.

Indians; imagine your mother, your sister-in-law, your sister, or your daughter being forced to strip naked in front of you, raped, and then having a gun shoved into her genitals and fired.

Ask yourself, what would your mental state be?

To those who identify as Indian, If you consider yourselves human, imagine this brutality as your own. Only then will you grasp the scale of what was inflicted – and how such atrocities redefine the lives of their victims.

During the Indian military intervention in Tamil Eelam under the guise of a peacekeeping mission, those who were killed were not Sinhalese but they were Tamils!, the very people India claimed to be protecting.

The Indian army, unwilling to face the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil’s Armed forces) in direct confrontation, resorted to attacking civilian spaces instead. They deliberately bombarded temples, hospitals, and schools, the very places where women, children, and the elderly had taken shelter.

Those senior commanders who led the Indian army like merciless beasts now live quiet lives in retirement, untouched by the consequences of their actions. The same goes for high-ranking Sri Lankan military officers who remain unpunished.

We are committed to bringing these men to justice. Several efforts are underway to file a case in a key European nation, holding them accountable for the brutalities committed against our people. This pursuit is not just about punishment but rather driven by the belief that no one should be allowed to escape justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ruthless Sinhala military forces were responsible for massacring tens of thousands of Tamil civilians. In the same way, the so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force — who came under the guise of peacekeepers — also brutally slaughtered thousands of Tamil men, women, and children.

This critical point must be clearly acknowledged and remembered. If the murderous pack of wolves who came to Tamil Eelam calling themselves the Indian Peace Keeping Force is to be recognized as the “national army,” then so be it that the world calls the Tamil Armed Liberation Movement; Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) — who tracked and eradicated those monsters — terrorists.

Because history shows us this truth clearly: the world once called Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela terrorists before finally recognizing their struggles for freedom. Tamil liberation fighters are well acquainted with this bitter truth, that the price for seeking our self-determination is being labeled a terrorists.

Translated by Dayalan.