Structural violence leads to higher suicides – FTZ in Sri Lanka prove

A Lead Into Self‐Directed Violence Structural violence can also lead to higher suicides. When the first of three Free Trade Zones (FTZ) in Sri Lanka was established in the town of Katunayake in 1978 under the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program, it was expected that rural, unemployed women who have little chance to find wage employment elsewhere would fill the newly created assembly‐line jobs. They would work for only a few years before marriage to accumulate money and jewelry for their dowry. The assumption was that the women work-ing in the zones would accept employment under any conditions, leading to rigorous work schedules and minimal wages. By 1995, Sri Lanka records the highest rate of suicide in the world at 48 deaths per 100,000, and the rate is two and a half times greater in rural areas than in metropolitan centers, corresponding to the rural–urban disparity in agricultural develop-ment and economic stagnation. More than half of all suicides in Sri Lanka are committed by young people, age 15 to 29, of both sexes.A wailing woman, Ramya, threatens to kill herself but is restrained and pushed onto a bed. When Ramya’s wailing and physical struggles do not stop, another woman pins her to the wall and tells her sternly to stop behaving like an ignorant fool and act like the educated woman she is. Ramya seems to consider this and quiets down for a while. A few hours later, she starts wailing again. Another resident, Malika, talks to her in a soft voice, asking her to “be a good child, and listen to what others say.” Ramya again quiets down and falls asleep with her head on a friend’s lap. Women casually mention committing suicide at the factories. It is common for them to point to a stressful situation and to say that the only thing left for them to do is to put a rope around their necks and hang themselves or to pour a bottle of poison in their mouths. These suicidal expressions usually come at the end of a long story and appear to provide relief and a symbolic closure to their concerns. Listeners offer comforting words, praising the storyteller for having the courage not to commit suicide despite the problems. Often the story-teller adds a few more sentences about how hard resisting the impulse for self‐harm is, and how they are strong women who can negotiate an unfair world with quiet resolve. They overcome their difficulties through a common identity as migrant transnational factory workers and the sisterhood the women develop with their housemates.In a short story by one of the FTZ workers, a worker who has committed suicide narrates the following story from her coffin, surveying her own funeral: “Both amma [mother] and thatha[father] are crying now. You would not have to cry so much if you had been more understand-ing of my problems. Look at the way boarding [house] auntie is grieving. I hope at least now she will be more sympathetic toward girls’ problems. Ah, here comes Kumar. He is crying now. He should. He is the reason why I am lying here.” In the story, the dead woman takes her revenge by making all those who have wronged her regret their actions. The story grows haunting at the end as she screams in fear, pleading with her relatives and friends not to leave her alone in the cold, dark cemetery (Hewamanne, 2010).