Dear Mr. President: Letter From A Sri Lankan Queer Woman
Aloka Wijesinghe
Mr. President,
As I was going home after lectures yesterday [Monday 5th November 2018], I had to wait in Malabe from 12.45 PM to 8.00 PM, because of your rally at Diyatha. On social media, I noticed a couple of friends of mine being boldly and bravely vocal about remarks you made during your speech. When I browsed through a couple of articles, I just said to myself, “Wait, I’m just an 18 year old and I never had a thing for politics unless it affected my right to live, I mean I’m neither a fan of Ranil Wickremesinghe nor of Mahinda Rajapaksa, I’m done with all these useless rallies where people from far away towns have to come to Colombo on buses and block the roads so students like us have to forget going home or worse, find a place to stay in the road, but in hindsight I bet homeless people have it better”.
When I read a couple of articles I just saw that you, Mr. President, had referred to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as “සමනලයා”; now we all know that this is derogatory language. With this kind of dialogue, you, Mr President, have sunk deeper than the titanic. You also referred to politicians working with Mr wickremesinghe as “සමනල කල්ලිය”.
When the most powerful man in the country takes issue with people like me on private matters, Mr President, I, for one, will not remain silent.
Mr. President,
Your presidential term is best-known for soundbites such as calling upon people to stop drinking Milo, and about the cashews served on board the national airline. But despite all that, there was some respect towards you, somewhere. And that is what you have now lost. For good.
Mr. President,
You decided to degrade the lives of millions, who still do not have their basic human rights to love who they love, and simply to live in peace. You used our lives to insult your political opponent.
I’m an 18 year old cis lesbian woman who was severely bullied at school, for which, in most cases, the teachers took issue with me and in most cases they themselves were my bullies that I couldn’t stand up to. Dear Mr. President, I am a Lesbian cis woman in Sri Lanka and for people like me, our siblings give up on us, in most cases. People like me are homeless because of their sexual orientation. People like me are forced to enter heterosexual marital ties at an early age without our consent, and in some cases, are raped by family members to turn us straight. People like me are continuously mocked because people like me are not seen as normal.
Many queer youth are scared to talk out loud because of the fear of cis-hetero-normative stigmas and backlashes.
Mr. President,
