Sri Lankan student goes to UN to protest school attack: "Sir, I was forcibly brought to my knees and pulled by the ear"

"That day my friends and I forgot to bring our textbooks."

 Adriana, 14, still remembers that day three years ago.

 But it is by no means a fond memory.

 "The English sir was just as angry as he was.

 She says teachers at Gateway School in Negombo often punished students in that way.  But that day did not stop there.

 "Sir, my ears hurt a lot. Besides, when we were on our knees, all the other friends surrounded us from time to time and started laughing."

 It was a Friday.

 She told her mother when she got home that she had been abused at school.

 The mother, who is also a doctor, says that forcing girls to kneel in front of men gives the impression that girls should be humble in front of boys, so no girl should kneel in front of a man.  When she went to school the following Monday to complain about it, she received an unusual response from school authorities.

 The school authorities refused to admit that such an incident had taken place.

 But Adriana's mother did not give up the fight.

 When she realized that justice was not being done by the school authorities, she sought the help of the police and the courts.

 "They first told me not to come to school. Then they started bullying my two children. Finally they told me to take my children out of school," said the mother's voice.

 Meanwhile, school teachers continued to take revenge on Adriana.

 Adriana, who was usually the first in the class, began to get low marks in the term exams.

 Meanwhile, she was ordered to stay away from friends and sit alone in a corner of the classroom for three weeks while studying.

 "The teacher yells at me and my friends when I go to drill."

 The mother says that she complained to the police when the school did not treat her daughter unfairly, which angered the school authorities.

 "The police actually conducted an investigation and called the principal, where I agreed to withdraw the complaint, but on one condition," Dr. Thus Wickramanayake told me.

 "My condition was that the school should adopt a policy of protecting children."

 However, the principal who went back to school on the same day has started harassing her daughter again, she says.

 "The principal never asked you how you were, did you, son?"  The mother asks the daughter.

 We listen to Adriana again.

 "The principal wrote a letter to those who had beaten me, saying that nothing had happened. Then they told my friends not to talk to me."

 She meditates on it all with pain.

 "I lost all my friends. I was really sad."

 She later left Sri Lanka and settled in Britain.

 Born in Britain and educated in Sri Lanka, Adriana now remembers Sri Lanka with a relaxed attitude.

 "I had no friends in Sri Lanka, Mom. They were all fake friends," she told her mother recently.

 "I have only one friend in Sri Lanka now. He is not from our school," the girl told me as I felt reluctant to recall that experience.

 Recently, she told her mother that she only goes to Sri Lanka to see its coastline.

 "I am very happy now. Teachers in this country do not hit children, they do not punish like in Sri Lanka," Adriana said.

 "And I have friends here now. Real friends."

 "It was not the children's fault, son, they did what they were forced to do," the mother, Dr. Thus Wickramanayake, reminded the daughter.

 "They abused not only my daughter, but my son as well," said Dr. Charika Marasinghe, a lawyer who specializes in child rights.  Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

 It states that the government should take steps to protect the child from any form of abuse, neglect or incitement to sexual misconduct.

 "I'm not aware of the findings of neuroscience today, the findings of psychiatry today, and the fact that children who have been physically abused as children face a variety of problems, especially in their marital relationships, as they grow into adulthood."  Dr. Charika Marasinghe told the BBC Sinhala Service.

 When there was no recourse in the Sri Lankan judiciary, the mother, along with her daughter, sought the help of the United Nations, not only for her children but for all children facing such a fate.

 That was after the establishment of the Stop Child Cruelty Organization for Children.

 She informed her last week that the complaint filed with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC) on 18 August 2019 had been registered.

 Dr. Thush Wickremanayake has been informed that the Sri Lankan government has been given until March next year to respond.

 Adriana is the first Sri Lankan girl to seek help from a United Nations body against injustice in her country.