Shreen Saroor thumbs the worn-out edges of the carefully acquired family photographs she produces as her artifact. Pointing to the many faces in the photo, identifying each of them and her memories with them, a big extended family looks back at the viewer, where generations huddle together under Shreen’s grandfather’s roof. ‘I was quite fond of him, my grandfather. He was the area organizer of a political party.’ Although Shreen was quite young at the time of the photo, she believes his involvement in local politics may have impacted her journey in activism spaces.
Growing up in Mannar, Shreen experienced a close-knit, familial lifestyle until the expulsion of the Muslims from the Northern Province by the LTTE in 1990. ‘Those early years of my life were filled with experiences of war, violence, loss, and resistance – I was resisting the war and atrocities committed against minorities’ (UN Women, 2021). Shreen lost her father a year after they were forcibly expelled from their hometown, and the tragic losses combined with the experience of displacement at a young age shaped the foundation of a life based on a search for truth and justice. In many ways, it reflected the harsh realities of what many families from the North and East faced and thus, changed the history of Sri Lanka by providing a framework for reconciliation and accountability.
At eighteen, Shreen had no choice but to live out her days in isolation and disenfranchisement in Colombo, where she had joined Colombo University to begin her education in Business Administration and Accounting after topping her Advanced Level District results. Her father had believed it was the best decision in the context of the Sri Lankan civil war, where conflict and bloodshed were rampant in the North and East.
A generally curious, analytical, and determined person, Shreen felt she was placed under a microscope during this time. Bullied and pressured by her University peers to ‘be more Muslim’ confused Shreen in a myriad of ways. ‘In this family photo, my grandmother is wearing a saree and covers her head with its edge. This is the only reflection of Muslim culture I was exposed to, and she bitterly pushes against the need to succumb to an idea that would appease others. ‘Why must I be their version of Muslim?’ she asks. For her, this included challenging multiple groups of people – whether Sinhala-speaking Muslims from Colombo or Tamil–speaking Northern Muslims, or those influential in the society. Her persistence to remain authentic was the first time Shreen found herself ‘resisting’ and was a defining moment in her struggle against the state and society.
As Shreen grew older, the question of why her family was forced to leave Mannar by the LTTE regime constantly plagued her mind. This unanswered question influenced Shreen to begin the hunt for justice and truth, and what started as a personal struggle eventually evolved into her identifying a deep womb of interwoven challenges faced by women both inside her community and outside. Shreen could envision a hunt for ‘collective return’ for all women whose families and children had been forcibly evicted or displaced due to war. She visited many refugee camps where women’s multiple roles and their participation in the civil war opened her eyes to a shared experience of ‘sisterhood, solidarity, and resilience. ‘Women from all walks of life in Sri Lanka want the truth to be established, even if there may be multiple truths,’ she writes in a Groundviews article. (2021)
‘The state has completely failed us. It was never in their interest to protect us,’, Shreen’s late father would say to her, and every interaction with the women in the refugee camps reminded her of her resistance and how far she had come. Apart from battling society and the hyper–masculinised sympathisers of an ‘Islam’ she did not identify with, the large-scale corruption within the power systems and structures was a driving factor that Shreen fought against in her search for justice and freedom. She applies it to current contexts and reflects on how deeply–rooted these networks are ingrained within the fabric of a nation. ‘[We] want the state to admit the root causes of conflict, hold perpetrators of atrocities to account, achieve equal rights, reframe narratives of conflict, guarantee non-recurrence, and enable victims to seek redress for violations while memorialising… losses.’ (Groundviews, 2021)
Today, Shreen has helped to form many women’s groups, including the Mannar Women’s Development Federation in her home town-Mannar, which aims to guide war-affected and displaced women with income-generative projects by upskilling them while combating gender-based violence and demanding reforms to discriminatory laws. She formed a network of women of all ethnicities - Tamil, Muslim, and Sinhalese- to address the post-war issues and uphold the rule of law and human rights. She was bestowed with international human rights awards for her invaluable and efficacious work: including the Voices of Courage award (2008), the N-Peace Award (2011), and the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law (2017). ‘At the same time,’ she laughs and adds, ‘I feel I have done enough in my search for justice.’ She hopes to pass on this yearning for justice and resistance to the younger generations; in Sri Lanka, there will always be a context where its citizens must demand accountability and nondiscrimination from the government. Shreen hopes for a more united Sri Lanka, one that’s not divided by its government into various factions. ‘Affected people and their allies seeking communal justice is the future I envision.’
(Sakina Aliakbar holds a Master of Creative Writing, Publishing & Editing from Melbourne, Australia. She writes for film and prose in fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction across various genres on culture, identity, and sexuality. She is currently based in Sri Lanka.)
(Sharanya Sekaram is the co-founder of Everystory Sri Lanka and identifies (for now) as a Sri Lankan feminist activist, researcher, and writer — working as a consultant in the gender space. She is currently reading for a Post-Graduate Diploma in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colombo, and you can find her on Twitter @sharasekaram and on her blog "Writing from That Sekaram Girl")
Reference links and further reading:
‘Reconciliation In Practice’, Shreen Saroor, Groundviews, 2021, https://groundviews.org/2021/01/27/reconciliation-in-practice/
‘The Tragic Lives of Women Victims of the PTA’, Shreen Saroor, Groundviews, 2022, https://groundviews.org/2022/02/09/the-tragic-lives-of-women-victims-of-the-pta/
‘Denying Justice While Dehumanising A Community At Large’, Shreen Saroor, Groundviews, 2021, https://groundviews.org/2021/04/21/denying-justice-while-dehumanizing-a-community-at-large/
‘I am Generation Equality: Shreen Saroor, women’s rights activist,’ UN Women, 2021. (https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2021/6/i-am-generation-equality-shreen-saroor)