War-Affected Women Bewail Their Plight

By Suvendrini Kakuchi,(IPS) - Although unmarried, Rajini Padamaraj, 32, is burdened with the responsibility of looking after the needs of her entire household, composed of her mother and two younger siblings. The slightly built woman who is of Tamil ethnic origin and originally from the Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka, found a job last October as a sewing instructor in a training centre for women funded by a Japanese women’s group. Association of War-Affected Women (AWAW) represents some 2,000 women across Sri Lanka whose sons or husbands were either disabled or killed during the war against the LTTE rebels, who were fighting for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51575