is rape necessary to national security?

[Margaret Trawick <trawick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>INDIA ABROAD
>June 23,2000
>IMMIGRATION
>
>Asylum
>Lanka rape case goes to top German court By MANIK MEHTA
>BERLIN -- The case of a Tamil woman from Sri Lanka, who had applied for
>asylum in Germany because she claimed that she had been raped by that
>country's security forces, is engaging the top legal minds of the country.
>The woman, who is 30 years old and whose name has not been released by the
>court due to sensitivities involved, has now taken her case to the highest
>legal recourse of Germany, the constitutional court in Karlsruhe, in a
>desperate attempt to stop the proceedings to deport her and her 7-year-old
>daughter from Hude near Bremen.
>The woman's lawyer said that he was confident that she had a strong case
>for review at the court.
>According to the woman's account, she was arrested in 1997 by the Sri
>Lankan security forces because she had given lodging to Tamil rebels in
>her guest house. While in prison, she had been beaten and raped several
>times, the woman who was in tears told the administration court of
>Oldenburg. She needed to be hospitalized for a week after her release on
>bail.
>In rejecting her appeal, the judge endorsed the decision of the Federal
>Office for Asylum which had rejected her application for asylum.
>In his ruling, the judge expressed "understanding" for the action taken by
>the Sri Lankan security forces against Tamils. The "preventive measures
>against terrorism" justified that "even uninvolved citizens were
>restricted in their freedom by the security measures," even though the
>yardsticks employed appeared to be "frequently high-handed."
>The judge also rejected rape as a ground for granting asylum, saying that
>the alleged attacks on her during her imprisonment were no reason to grant
>asylum because one could not rule out, as a result of the "necessary
>security measures," that there would be "excesses" committed by individual
>government officials without government consent. The judge based his
>decision on a -- now outdated -- report on the situation prepared by the
>German Foreign Office which had, however, withdrawn it when the judgment
>on the Tamil woman's application for asylum was passed.
>According to the court, the physical attacks and acts of rape did not
>justify asylum or protection against deportation. It was not torture but
>"simply brutal behavior." However, the judge did not specifically touch on
>the question of rape, but merely referred to the physical assault on the
>woman. The incidents of rape are not even mentioned in the written
>judgment handed down by the judge.
>The woman's appeal to the high court in Lueneburg remained unsuccessful
>and her lawyer in Bremen appealed to the constitutional court in
>Karlsruhe. He
>argued that her basic right of human dignity and her right to have legal
>remedy had been violated.
>According to the Bremen-based International Human Rights Association, acts
>of rape of female prisoners by representatives of the state are not
>uncommon in Sri Lanka where such acts were used as a "psychological weapon
>of war against the Tamilian population."
>Source
>http://www.indiaabroadonline.com/PublicAccess/ia-06232000/Immigration/Lank
>a.html
>