Opening Citizenship: Civil Society and Queer
Networks in Sri Lanka
-- Sharmini Fernando
In 2001, The International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission
(ILGHRC) awarded its annual Felipa Award to two Sri Lankan activist
groups: Companions on a Journey (COJ) and the Women's Support
Group (WSG). The Felipa award:
…honours organizations and or individuals that have made significant
contributions toward securing the human rights and freedoms of
all people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse
on the basis of sexual orientation, sexual conduct between consenting
adults, gender identity, or HIV status, in the world.
There is a complex story behind the recipients of this award,
and the emerging visibility of gay and lesbian activism in Sri
Lanka. The AIDS pandemic, and the discourses on sexuality, bodies
and human rights that accompanied it, proved to be a crucible
for gay and lesbian activism on the fissipated national body of
Sri Lanka. For the first time in Sri Lankan history, it enabled
individuals who were considered outsiders to the nation-state,
to stake a claim for their inclusion as full citizens, thereby
challenging the 130-year-old sodomy laws that prohibit homosexuality
in the country. This challenge to the nation-state, by a community
starting to identify with its sexual orientation, has also emerged
at a time when the power of the nation-state has been severely
tested with a protracted civil war, as well as globalizing forces
and devolutionary pressures. Paradoxically, the push towards greater
democratisation by a disadvantaged minority has come at a time
when democracy within the nation-state itself is severely threatened.
I will argue that the genesis of Sri Lankan homosexual groups
and the emergence of a fragile queer citizenship are outcomes
of complex transnational currents that include the global HIV/AIDS
movement, the growth of human rights-based discourses, and the
proliferation of non-governmental organisations within Sri Lankan
society. The leveraging of these globalized movements by an active
and powerful NGO sector, both internationally and nationally,
has enabled the opening up of public spaces for homosexual Sri
Lankans to participate in citizenship rites within the larger
community.
This essay is necessarily provisional as I concentrate primarily
on how NGOs currently function as conduits for citizenship rights
within Sri Lanka's civil society at a time when both the state
and civil society are under tremendous pressures as they recover
from a twenty year war. Within the context of war and the recent
cease-fire NGOs have emerged as a powerful members of civil society
in Sri Lanka. At such a moment, the positioning of NGOs within
civil society, and the relative power they wield via global policy
circuits, enable such organizations to empower communities that
have been wilfully and systematically marginalized from public
life.
Companions on a Journey: an example of citizenship in action
Companion on a Journey (COJ) was formed relatively recently with
initial support from an international HIV/AIDS donor agency, Alliance
London in 1995. The financial support enabled a young gay-identified
man, Sherman DeRose, to attend an important AIDS conference in
India sponsored by NAZ (a UK based group which educates South
Asian men who have sex with men about HIV/AIDS). This crucial
opportunity to interact with other South Asian gay activists encouraged
De Rose to begin organizing in Sri Lanka. Upon his return to Sri
Lanka, De Rose and a small group of young men who identified as
homosexuals organized Companions On A Journey.
The group attracted considerable media coverage. The English
media ran several stories that gave the group exposure (both negative
and somewhat positive) and enabled De Rose to become the public
'face' for gay male Sri Lankans. However, The initial public euphoria
of De Roses' "coming-out" was soon counter-acted by
violent threats on his life and a public outcry against sexual
perversion. Homosexuality was also conflated with paedophilia
in the press, and a number of groups fighting children's involvement
in the sex tourism industry in Sri Lanka joined the homophobic
vitriolª. Although this phase of threatened violence and
virulent homophobia was not sustained, it was to mark the beginning
of an on-going battle between Companions On a Journey, the Women's
Support Group and various conservative elements within Sri Lankan
society that wanted the groups and its agenda to disappear.
After a short suspension of their activities following the initial
public outcry, Companions On a Journey registered with the Ministry
of Social Services in September 1995 as an NGO with a mandate
to support persons living with HIV/AIDS. With a seed grant from
the Royal Netherlands Embassy, they rented a house in Colombo,
and created a drop-in centre for gay men and men who have sex
with men. The speed by which COJ organized itself within a Sri
Lankan landscape that knew no prior public homosexual organizing
speaks to the strength of a transnational language that provided
some key tools for this group to organize with. This included
a sophisticated human rights grammar framed by the North American
and European experiences of ACT UP and Queer Nation and articulated
in India via the NAZ project, new linkages being formed between
queer organizing in the South Asian diaspora in the UK, the US
and Canada and within South Asian countries, as well as crucial
funding from foreign donors.
In 1999 Companions On a Journey finally received core funding
from the Dutch donor agency HIVOS. This promise of continued funding
enabled COJ to sustain and promote their program of advocacy and
support for the rights of Sri Lankan homosexuals despite the virulent
hostility they continued to face. By inserting themselves into
the public eye, COJ enacted sexual citizenship and created a space
where initially, gay men and later, lesbians were allowed to participate
in the political, social and spatial life of the state. COJ's
numerous civic activities include the establishment and co-ordination
of a highly visible HIV support group, which also promotes the
use of condoms, distribution of educational material, organisation
of media campaigns, and research into the needs of HIV positive
men and women. They hold an annual AIDS day event on December
1, and have constructed the Sri Lankan AIDS Quilt. Their activities
are well publicized, and they are frequently recognised for their
efforts by international organisations such as the International
Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, their donors, and Sri
Lankan groups working on HIV and human rights issues. Their international
recognition is directly connected to how they are viewed locally,
and how their expertise is utilised in local policy making.
Although Companions On a Journey was primarily created to provide
support for the homosexual community on issues ranging from HIV
counselling to peer support, they have since set their sights
on a more dangerous political agenda-to work towards the decriminalization
of homosexuality in Sri Lanka. Homosexuality is Sri Lanka is proscribed
under section 365 and 365A of the Penal Code, which state:
365. Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse
against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal,
shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for
a term which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable
to fine.
365A. Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or
is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to
procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross
indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of an offence,
and shall be punished with imprisonment of either description
for a term which may extend to two years or with fine, or with
both, and shall also be liable to be punished with whipping.
Under these conditions, the activism of Companions On a Journey
is a crucial participatory strategy to influence the formation
of government policy that affects homosexuals, and to seek long-term
change in the ways in which gays and lesbians in Sri Lanka are
permitted to order their social world. Being in the public eye
has enabled COJ to reach a large audience both locally and internationally.
The most vociferous generator of feedback for COJ has been the
news media that, on the one hand, portrays the group as a pioneer,
and on the other, tends to caricature its members as immoral perverts.
However, by using the media and other public venues in strategic
ways, COJ has emerged as a body politic, and managed to claim
public space and attention
Can these actions be seen as active, political participation
in national life? If so, how does the work of COJ force us to
rethink notions of citizenship? The formation of COJ and the more
recent formation of the Women's Support Group serve as counterpoints
to the state repression of homosexuals. Their tenuous but real
connection to the state is a milestone in political activism.
As the first registered, openly gay space in Sri Lanka, COJ is
tenuously connected to the state, and the state has not used its
considerable powers to shut the down the organisation. Nor have
they used the penal code provisions to proscribe the group. Although
a number of incidents have occurred to threaten the members of
COJ, none of these incidents have been directly linked to state
actors. For the first time in Sri Lankan history, one can mail
a letter to a gay organisation- making it possible to publicize
not only AIDS related work, but also activities and resources
for gays and lesbians in Sri Lanka.
NGOs as a possible conduit for Citizenship
Since 1994, members of Companions On a Journey, and more recently,
the Women's Support Group, have constructed a sphere of influence
within the public domain to perform the rites/rights of citizenship,
and have managed to stake a claim on the body politic of Sri Lanka.
As mentioned earlier, numerous transnational actors continue to
mediate the engagement of these two groups with the hostile and
now communal state of Sri Lanka. Influential organizations like
UNAIDS, WHO, and the force of the global human rights regime play
a significant role in supporting the politics of national level
organising. Being placed within an influential global ambit has
allowed COJ and the WSG transnational supports, including donors
(international and private) whose constituencies include visible
homosexual communities (in the Netherlands for example). These
supports have bought the groups legitimacy, time, and a public
space to ensure that they continue the engagement with the Sri
Lankan state and other significant national civil society actors.
According to Chantal Mouffe, marginal groups, when they appear
onto the body politic of a nation, participate in a collective
undertaking that makes them radical, democratic citizens-they
act as citizens . The socio-political engagement of Companions
on A Journey and the Women's Support Group, along with other communities
involved in progressive social action, have forced open the boundaries
of citizenship and expanded the sphere of social justice. If they
cease to do this, it would become far easier for the state to
solidify the 'non-citizen' status of groups that have been historically
constituted as "other" to the nation-state.
Until recently, two theoretical approaches appear to have dominated
discourses on citizenship: Liberalism and Communitarianism. Liberalism
has focused on the formal relationship between the individual
and the state. In Liberalism, politics are defined as actions
the citizen takes to get entitlements from the state or other
citizens, at the same time mitigating the interference of the
state. The concept of 'community' in Liberalism is rather diluted,
defined as a group of legally defined citizens who can pursue
their own rights. Liberals, according to Chantal Mouffe, insist
on "the priority of the right over the good"; the individual
is allowed to pursue his or her goals, and the community cannot
usually impose on this pursuit.
Communitarianism has provided the most accepted and consistent
critique of Liberalism in modern democratic theory. Communitarians
generally believe that as a community, people can decide on what
kind of society they can create. The main critique of Liberalism
is its lack of community, and the moral consensus that defines
political association. For Communitarians, citizenship is a communal,
participatory relationship that individuals engender with the
state.
Traditionally, the rights-based (liberal) concept of citizenship
takes as its point of departure T. H. Marshall's exposition of
its three elements, which expand the liberal formulation of civil
and political rights to include social rights (education, health,
and welfare) . However, when we reconstruct Marshall's explanation
of civil rights to account for for gender or sexual identity,
it becomes clear that groups other than heterosexual males often
receive legal political rights without achieving full civil rights.
For example, women in Sri Lanka, who received their franchise
in the early 1930's, are still denied their reproductive autonomy.
Similarly, homosexual bodies are policed in Sri Lanka under section
365-365A of the penal code, which makes homosexuality punishable
by up to 12 years of imprisonment. Due to these limitations, today,
most rights-based accounts of citizenship extend their formulations
to embrace new categories demanded by social movements. At this
point, social movements that have spawned international non-governmental
organisations such as the International Gay Lesbian Human Rights
Commission, and ACT UP are two prominent (but theoretically and
politically quite different) international groups that have pushed
the issues of sexual citizenship forward.
The dominant theoretical positions on citizenship have been challenged
over the past few decades by various poststructural interventions.
Poststructuralists reject a coherent and centered subject at the
center of social life. Various poststructuralist strands-feminism,
queer theory and radical democracy-have each questioned and challenged
the liberal democratic traditions and highlighted the ways in
which the concept of liberal citizenship excludes and reduces
all those who do not fall under the category of the heterosexual
male citizenship prototype . Ruth Lister's analysis of citizenship
as status and practice provides a useful lens through which to
analyze the actions of NGOs, and specifically the actions of Companions
On a Journey and the Women's Support Group that enable us to interpret
such actions as radical citizenship in action.
Lister argues that the impact of the HIV/AIDS movement on Human
Rights policies and practices seeking to limit the spread of HIV
and to protect persons living with HIV, highlights the ways in
which rights- based accounts of citizenship (civil and political
rights), were extended to include social rights (which absorb
new and evolving areas of concern that new social movements have
highlighted). Furthermore, the right to participate in decision-making
in a range of spheres, is reflected, in the context of welfare
institutions, in demands for user-involvement and greater democratic
accountability . Lister uses a broad definition of political citizenship
in contrast to the model of classical civic republicanism, which
confines political citizenship to the formal political sphere
of government.
A broad definition of citizenship would include both the process
of negotiation with welfare institutions, non-governmental organizations,
and other public bodies such as various governmental and non-governmental
committees that have considerable powers of influence. These forms
of political activism are important for citizenship from the perspective
of their impact both on the wider community and on the individuals
involved ."
By shifting citizenship away from the state towards civil society
spaces, Companions On a Journey and the Women's Support Group
are performing a radical form of democratic citizenship, while
at the same time challenging the relations between men and women
in Sri Lanka. Theorists have implicated new social movements and
grass roots organisations as important catalysts in civil society
and harbingers for social change, and have acknowledged these
movements as gateways for citizenship. The political activism
of COJ and the WSG although firmly located within civil society
has also peripherally influenced the state.
The concept of citizenship has changing implications as new social
movements contest various theoretical formulations of citizenship.
From a broad perspective, citizenship can be understood as relations
between political obligation, rights, and inclusion in the political
community. Citizenship can be thought of as a political identity
of entitlements and responsibilities that is equally shared in
a liberal democratic society. For this essay, I have used citizenship
to mean a product of an individual's entire social existence,
beginning with the civil, political and social rights, including
forms of cultural access, representation and belonging that go
beyond rights . This expanded understanding of citizenship can
be a powerful force to challenge structures within societies that
are inimical to marginal groups.
For Sri Lankan homosexuals whose citizenship rights are circumscribed
by specific legal foreclosures, acting as citizens through civic
duty has allowed for the possibility of recuperating their right
to full citizenship. Through their community services and public
political actions they are engaged in transforming citizenship
as status into citizenship as practice . The claiming of public
space through civic engagements which I see as active, political
participation in national life, has not only contested the hyper-masculinity
and femininity of a militarised landscape, but it has also ensured
a small opening for the possibility of a pluralistic society.
NGOs such as Companions On a Journey and the Women's Support
Group, through the leveraging of transnational activism, make
us re-think unitary notions of citizenship, and move citizenship
discourse toward a multidimensional and plural concept. Lesbian
and gay activism and a visible albeit small, homosexual community
exist in Sri Lanka, largely due to the presence of various non-state
institutions with the ability to leverage global social movements.
Without these pan-global social movements and the financial support
they generate, the sustainability of COJ and the WSG would not
have been possible. While there may have been a possibility for
an autonomous gay movement in Sri Lanka (homosexuality has been
a documented reality on the island as evidenced by the existence
of Bill 365), the specific political formation tied to the AIDS
pandemic could not have happened without a globalized environment
and new social movements. It is within and through these globalized
social movements and the social structures they engender, namely
NGOs, that this specific articulation of citizenship was possible.
Through these manifestations, a challenge to social subordination
and injustice is emerging in Sri Lanka.
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