March 8: International Women’s Day

Honouring women human rights defenders
who dedicated their lives to promote justice and equality for women

 From 38 women leaders who founded the network in 1986, APWLD now has close to 150 individual and organisation members in 23 countries of the Asia Pacific region.

 APWLD has been recognised as “the leading, very strong and dynamic feminist network of organisations and individuals in the region” by the 2005 External Evaluation. It would not have been possible without contribution of our members – courageous women human rights defenders who dedicate their lives to promoting women’s rights and fighting the injustice and discrimination against women.

 On its 20th anniversary, APWLD is paying tribute and honouring its members, who are no longer with us, in recognition of their contribution to advancement of women’s rights in their countries and in the region.

 Salma Sobhan, Bangladesh
1937 – 2003

 Salma Sobhan was a founding member and a staunch ally of APWLD. She was a member of the APWLD Regional Council and was part of the constitutional review committee in 2003.  Salma will be remembered as an active, vibrant woman, committed to her work as a lawyer activist for women’s rights. She was representing Ain-O-Salish Kendra (ASK), a Bangladesh NGO, in APWLD.

 Salma Sobhan pioneered the concept of educating the deprived women of Bangladesh about their legal rights. She helped to develop a legal aid programme for BRAC which contributed to spreading legal knowledge to rural women in the remote areas of Bangladesh and was directly involved in supervising the implementation process of this project.

In 1986, along with eight other members, she founded the human rights organisation, Ain-O-Salish Kendra (ASK), and was its first Executive Director until her retirement in 2001. Under the leadership of Salma Sobhan, ASK has developed into one of the leading organizations involved in human rights activism and extending legal aid services to deprived women. Today ASK has a staff of nearly 200 people and has received international recognition. Salma Sobhan also contributed towards establishing the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST).

 She played a leading role in the development of Women Living Under Muslim Law network. Just before her death, she was elected as a board member of Geneva based UN Research Institute for Social Development.

 Salma Sobhan was a source of inspiration for human right activists in Bangladesh and in South Asia and will continue to remain so.

 Salma Sobhan died of a heart attack on December 30, 2003.

YAYORI MATSUI, Japan
1934-2002

 Yayori Matsui was an outstanding woman activist who led the earliest campaign against sex tourism and the trafficking of Asian women to Japan. She was also one of the first to draw attention to the issue of Asian "comfort women" and to bring justice to them internationally.

Yayori was a member of Women’s Rights Human Rights Task Force of APWLD. She will be remembered as one of the prime movers of 'The Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery' held in Tokyo in December 2000. Together with hundreds of activists, lawyers and victims of Japanese military sexual slavery she worked tirelessly to make the Tribunal possible resulting in the unprecedented decision of a People's Tribunal declaring the Emperor of Japan as a war criminal.

Yayori was also the first woman to serve as the Chief of Tachikawa Bureau and the first women correspondent of the Asahi Shimbun Asian General Bureau. But whatever her title, she never lost sight of her true mission as a journalist—to bring to her readers the stories of those whose voices would otherwise go unheard. After retiring from the Asahi in 1994, she founded the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Centre, which became a home base for further development of her activities both as a feminist and as an international journalist. In 1998, she organised Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan (VAWW-NET Japan).

 In the fall of 2002, Yayori was told that she was suffering from liver cancer. She devoted the remaining four months of her life to realising her plan for a “Women’s Museum of War and Peace” that would serve as a centre to carry on the action she had begun. She died on December 27, 2002, leaving her entire estate to this Women’s Museum of War and Peace. The Museum founded on the principles of Yayori Matsui’s life opened in August 2005.

Raquel Edralin Tiglao, Philippines
1948 – 2001

Raquel Edralin Tiglao was a dynamic and visionary member of Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development.  She was a dedicated activist, who took her advocacy for the redress of violence against women from her work at the national level to the regional and international levels. She was a vibrant member of the APWLD Violence Against Women Task Force. Along with many others, she pioneered feminist counseling within an Asia Pacific context, nurtured the space for young women from situations of armed conflict to meet and understand the issues and challenged the impacts of trafficking in women. At the international level she played an important role in advocating for an International Criminal Court that would reflect the rights of women victims, as well as advocating from women’s rights in international forums such as the Beijing Conference.

Raquel had the spirit of courage which let her speak into a tense and crowded room with words that made the world seem sane again. We treasure her memory. It was an honour to have known and worked alongside with her (Alison Aggarwal, APWLD member/Australia).

A dedicated activist on behalf of women, Raquel founded the Women's Crisis Center (WCC) in Manila, expanded the Center to include a hospital-based intervention program for victims of violence, and was the center's director for ten years.

Her unflagging lobbying, educational outreach, and political activism were responsible for setting up women's desks in police stations, the initiation of a national Philippines campaign against violence against women, and a better and more comprehensive rape and sexual harassment law. The moving tributes that came from survivors of violence when cancer forced Raquel to step down as director of the WCC testify not only to her tireless and passionate work on behalf of women, but to the dignity and hope she helped restore to many women's lives.

During the Marcos dictatorship, Raquel was a political prisoner for two years. When several Filipinos started a fund to help subsidize Raquel's cancer treatment, she insisted that the money be used not only for her but for other activists who she said had suffered much worse during the detentions.

Raquel helped start CATW (Coalition against Trafficking in Women) in the Asia-Pacific region. When she died, she was on CATW-AP's Board of Directors and on the Advisory Board of CATW International.

On February 28, 2001 in Manila, Raquel Edralin-Tiglao died after having fought a long and valiant battle against cancer. (Janice G. Raymond, CATW)

KAMALINI WIJAYATILAKE, Sri Lanka

In July, 2004 the Sri Lankan and regional women’s movement lost Kamalini Wijayatilake to cancer. Knowing her as a colleague and a friend allowed glimpses not just into a colleague who could be implicitly trusted, but also of her as a mother, a partner, a hostess, and a caring human being.

 While her many dimensions remain little known, her faith and activism was tangible to all those who worked with her. She engaged intensely with politics and ethics of events and development, small and big, with processes as much as with issues. Her work on gender and the law – of taking rights education and legal literacy to grassroots groups in the country, a gender and law advisor, a feminist researcher and advocate, a board member of CENWOR (Centre for Women’s Research), make Kamalini’s longstanding contribution to Sri Lankan women’s movement very significant. Kamalini had been part of the Sri Lanka delegation many times to present the Sri Lanka Shadow Report on the CEDAW.

Her contribution and role regionally made her a valuable member of both APWLD and IWRAW-AP (International Women’s Rights Action Watch-Asia Pacific).

 What particularly defined her in APWLD was her sincerity about any office or task assigned to her and a sound mind, unclouded by passions and preferences that consume many of us. She had a quiet quality of putting discussions on an even keel, a quality that will be missed by us. Many friends in APWLD remember her as always taking care of the last detail in looking after them, giving names and references, fixing appointments, holidays, meals and helping in any way in complete disregard of her condition and comfort. What many may not know is that during the last Feminist Legal Theory workshop held by APWLD this May in Colombo, Kamalini was too frail to be with us physically but that she was central to the hosting of the event in Colombo. Keenly enquiring about the workshop kits, the hotel and the dinner arrangements, the workshop discussions and following up on how things went, typically defined her sense of responsibility. One could call upon her with research queries with as much ease and confidence as with enquiries on masks, batiks and holiday plans.

(Madhu Mehra, APWLD member)