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The Limits of #MeToo in Sri Lanka

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The Limits of #MeToo in Sri Lanka

Years after an explosion of accusations centered on the media industry, the movement has not had any lasting effects in Sri Lanka.

The Limits of #MeToo in Sri Lanka

A Sri Lankan woman walks with a child past a wall decorated with graffiti in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.

Credit: AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena

“He used to … pull the scarfs of the Muslim girls as ‘a joke.’ One journalist hated it so much, she kept bottles of perfume and deodorant on her desk and used to spray it on his face to make him stop. We had to take this as a joke, but I never found it funny,” journalist and communications specialist Aisha Nazim told me. She was describing a serial sexual harasser, whom she did not identify. The unnamed sexual harasser and his friend, another perpetrator whose identity she only hinted at, also maintained a “butt meter” to rate the bodies of female journalists on a scale of 1-10, Nazim said.

Nazim’s work to catalog stories of sexual harassment in Sri Lanka is a local offshoot of the global #MeToo movement. At the same time, the obstacles faced by Nazim and other women seeking to highlight the problem of sexual harassment, particularly in the workplace, clearly highlight the limits of the moment in Sri Lanka.

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