When they stormed the senior palace in Colombo on July 9, 2022, Sri Lankans protesting the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa shocked the earth.
Rebels ransacked the presidential palace live-streaming on Twitter and YouTube and celebrated in the streets as state safety battled to have the people.
Weeks later, it appeared as though Rajapaksa’s resignation affirmed the island nation’s transition to democracy had come to an end. However, two years later, that ominous instant appears to have passed, and what is left is a program that has learned the necessary lessons to succeed.
The UNHRC in Geneva just received the specific details of Sri Lanka’s deteriorating social situation. Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, covered a number of systems on March 1, including Cyprus and Colombia. However, Turk’s study of the circumstances in Sri Lanka was particularly interesting.
Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans took to the streets two years ago, demanding serious political reforms and responsibilities for economic incompetence and corruption, which led to the most significant socio-economic problems in a generation, he told the assembled physique.
Turk’s melancholy confirmation of an option wasted begs the question: What went wrong? An understanding of Sri Lanka’s complex history and even more uncertain future may provide a potential solution.
Since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1948, Sri Lanka has constantly struggled to fulfill its political claim. Sri Lanka’s modern history, which is 150 kilometers south of India, is generally characterized by its colonial past.
Its shores were greatly valued for their proper place during the age of inquiry, starting with the Portuguese and the Dutch. This division remained generally unbroken up until the British arrived, who unified the area under its power in 1815.
Due to Sri Lanka’s abundant natural resources and lush farmland, extensive arrangement and economic restructuring, including the establishment of sizable tea and coffee plantations.
Sri Lanka’s regional economy and political institutions were largely influenced by its European colonial past when it declared independence in 1948.
But, underneath the surface, conflicts between the nation’s Sinhalese bulk and Tamil majority were making, an opposition that ultimately erupted into a destructive civil conflict that would last for a generation.
Origins of this issue can be traced back to Sri Lanka’s colonial past and are the result of a number of socio-political elements. Beyond a dramatic difference in sociable and language traditions, Siamese tended to be Buddhist, while Sri Lanka’s Tamil populace was mostly Hindu.
Despite generally just making off 10 % of the people, the island’s Tamil majority grew in importance under colonial rule. The American focus on the construction of schools and political facilities in Tamil neighborhoods after being aware of the team based on their prior experience in India.
Over time, this growth caused the Sinhalese majority to harbor a lot of animosity, which they would eventually attempt to remedy after freedom.
Following years of political persecution and fall to second-class position, militarized Tamil minority members of Sri Lanka attacked several army units across the area in July 1983. Using state data, the largely Sinhalese state retaliated by harassing Tamil households and communities, top to widespread violence.
The Tamil Tigers, the main army team responsible for resisting the position, shortly after embarked on a decades-long attack and execution plan. This would be combined with standard combat missions on the ground, which may see separatist forces seize many northern provinces.
The issue may persist until 2009, when the Sri Lankan government won the civil war and oversaw the remaining separate Tamil areas.
The government continued its extreme pursuit of domestic political opponents despite the almost 30-year conflict now being around. Difficulty of Tamil people who claimed that the government was nonetheless torturing them even after the fight was over were interviewed by the BBC in 2013. One girl, identified as Vasantha by the release, recalled one such incident exclusively.
Three people arrived on the final time, and they blindfolded me once more and handcuffed me at about two in the morning. I at that point believed they were going to murder me, ” she told Frances Harrison, an investigative journalist. Records from the hospital where she was taken after being abducted supported her claim of both physical and sexual victimization.
It’s been over 10 years since that BBC record, yet the human rights situation in Sri Lanka remains crucial. The authorities put in place a number of stringent security measures to halt unrest following Rajapaksa’s impeachment in 2022.
The newly elected President Wickremesinghe spearheaded the effort to strengthen the PTA, a harsh piece of legislation that successfully made detention and torture. Additionally, according to the United Nations, local law enforcement frequently harasses human rights activists and employs intimidation tactics.
The global unrest that wounded Rajapaksa’s management in 2022 may be attributed to several important factors. Two plan changes that had sparked a lot of controversy in the years before were well-known. The imbalance eventually grew due to irresponsible tax cuts intended to encourage growth.
The next was a state-wide ban on artificial fertilizer, which ultimately led to financial loss of up to US$ 400 million and sluggish rice and tea production.
Also, there were also historic human rights concerns that predated the 2022 demonstrations. The decades-old Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act, which has long been criticized for allowing corporations like child marriage, is one such issue.
It was this grouping of inequalities and widespread failures that led to the ardent presentations, affectionately remembered now as the People’s Protest, or “aragalaya”, which flooded the National Palace and unified the land in a way previously unknown.
For perhaps the first time in its history, Tamils, Muslims, and the majority of Sinhalese people banded together for the improvement of their island home.
So how did a populist movement, so powerful it physically ousted the nation’s chief executive, fail to achieve its most basic goals? In one word: organization.
Although thousands of Sri Lankans found common cause in the belief that both Rajapaksa’s government, and the quickly deteriorating economy, must come to an end, there was little in the way of structure or leadership.
Some observers, such as Tamil Guardian editor Thusiyan Nandakumar, believe that the protesters were too focused on the wrong things.
In a letter to the Diplomat in 2023, he wrote,” The movement also proposed no solutions to the island’s financial turmoil or an envisioned governance structure going forward.” He also wrote,” The movement failed to recognize the larger causes of the crisis.” A singular demand, one that did n’t even call for Rajapaksa to be held accountable for his crimes, sparked a movement that gathered around it. The weakness of the film ‘Go Home Gota‘ was whatweakened it. ”
In reality, Rajapaksa’s flight merely created a vacuum in which established politicians in Colombo were eager and prepared to fill. Lacking a unified agenda and consolidated leadership, protesters were at a loss in the crucial hours following the toppling of Rajapaksa’s government.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, the prime minister, quickly filled that vacuum by using his allies to put an end to the domestic conflict. His ironclad hold on power is still in place today, and the effective use of security laws and emergency declarations has for the time being destroyed any chance of democratic reform.
Democratic activists and the island’s minority populations, who are intimately aware of the state’s oppressive nature, still feel the same way today.
The failure of the Aragalaya will not come as a surprise to Tamils on the island, especially the mothers of the forcibly disappeared, whose ongoing protest has lasted much longer but attracted much less media attention. ” Nandakumar would later reflect on the protests.
Many observers, such as human rights lawyer Swasthika Arulingam, have a hard time forgetting the failures of thearagalaya.
“ But we have not achieved the long-term goals of aragalaya – like … no change in the political system, no accountability on corruption, and those who are responsible for stealing people’s money are still in power, ” she told the BBC in 2023.
The rare and completely wasted opportunity for reform that came along following Rajapaksa’s expulsion was present. Instead, the permanent democratic revolution that might have come from Sri Lanka’s semi-autocratic system was scrapped.
This unceremonious, quiet conclusion of a once-promising movement should serve as a reminder to democratic protesters everywhere. The first step in the direction of an autocratic government must be the election of its democratic replacement.
As a resident assistant with the South China Sea Newswire and a research assistant at Purdue University, Caleb M. Mills studies behavioral and ideological trends among non-state and state actors. His work has been featured in the Geopolitical Monitor, International Policy Digest and RealClearPolitics, and was recently cited in Anatol Lieven’s recent book ‘Climate Change and the Nation-State’ published by Oxford University.