It is definitely unique because there's always this fear when you travel into Sri Lanka that something might happen to you, or if you decide to do any sort of humanitarian work, there's always a possibility that you'll be detained as soon as you enter the country. There's no way of knowing when you would be released, and there's a possibility of being tortured.
Obviously, gender violence is at the heart of this issue, especially for women working in this field. For me, personally, I have not been doing this for very long. I've only been doing it for a few years, but when we travelled to the UN, to Geneva this February, we were meant to represent witnesses with the committee on enforced disappearances, and it just turned out at the very last minute that none of our witnesses were able to attend. Excuses were given as to why each witness couldn't attend. We were made to feel like something could potentially happen to us. One witness wasn't able to come because of travel issues, and someone's car broke down. We were very much made to wonder if something was going to happen to us to stop us from going to the UN.
As women, we are constantly in fear working in this realm. Individuals in our organization have been listed on the Sri Lanka gazette. That's always something, this pending fear for anyone working in this realm, that the moment you get on that gazette, that's it—your life is in danger.