We are human beings not savages.

After the Colombo Model United Nations conference ended I suggested starting a debating activity to Ms. Wolfe with Mr. O’Kane as the teacher sponsor. I became the student leader of the activity. Unfortunately I couldn’t do much since activities were disrupted by changes in the time table, exams and holidays. However we did debate a local issue which turned out to be quite a heated debate.

In May the local media was in an uproar over the case of a mother throwing her baby in the Kelaniya river. The mother was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison. The mother’s action does sound horrendous until you look into the details of the hardships they had to endure. This 3 year old boy was the youngest of 5 siblings. The father, a heavily indebted alcoholic, had left the family and only returned infrequently to steal the little money the mother managed to scrape by selling lottery tickets. While he was with her he was in the habit of drinking heavily and coming home to beat her up brutally. The mother is also a tsunami victim. Unable to feed the children, she had repeatedly tried to hand over the child to the government probation office, the police, and orphanages and even tried leaving him at the Kelaniya temple in the hope that someone would care for him. This incident happened one day after a failed attempt at leaving him at the temple. When crossing the bridge she threw him into the river on impulse. He was rescued by a trishaw driver and was in the ICU for a few days before he passed away.

The local media was very biased towards the child and hardly anyone empathized with the mother. I supported her because I have a little brother of 4 and I know how the child crying can get on your nerves at time and I amplified this and was able to imagine what it would be like for a clinically depressed woman in an abusive relationship living in bad living conditions with 5 children solely dependant on her.

There was a clear divide among the group. I was really annoyed with the opposition members who actually believed she should be tried for murder! My point was that she should be put through a rehabilitation process and given back the other 4 children. And what enraged me even more was the hypocrisy of the Sri Lankan government. After this incident the probation office, which had refused the child, took custody of the other FOUR children. In Sri Lanka an average of 2 children are killed per week simply because their parents cannot provide them with food for survival. With such a glaring problem the government should be addressing the wider issue of poverty rather than trying to throw an already clinically depressed woman into jail!