Sri Lanka’s Night of Turmoil
Sri Lankans have awoken to a changed country this morning after weeks of peaceful protests over the country’s economic crisis turned violent following the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The violence is believed to have started when pro-government groups attacked the anti-government protest site at the Galle Face Green in the capital, Colombo.
The prime minister’s exit still leaves one Rajapaksa, Mahinda’s brother Gotabaya, in charge as president. Mahinda’s decision to step down has not spared the family from public anger: By the time the day ended, the Rajapaksa ancestral home in Hambantota had already been set ablaze.
Mahinda and his immediately family were evacuated under heavily armed guard early this morning after protesters forced their way into his official residence.
On a night of violence in which five people were killed and a further 200 injured, one member of parliament was among the dead. MP Amarakeerthi Athukorala took his own life, according to police, after he shot two protesters and was soon encircled by a mob.
Devana Senanayake, a Sri Lankan reporter who spoke to Foreign Policy from Colombo, said the resignation of Rajapaksa is unlikely to deter protesters: “At the end of the day, people want a complete system change.”
As Senanayake wrote last week in Foreign Policy those demands for change have begun to crystallize over the past few weeks as disparate ethnic and social groups have joined the protests. Beyond urging the government to address the country’s financial crisis, there have been calls to demilitarize the north and east of the country and abolish the powerful executive presidency.
Of course, the roots of public frustration with the Rajapaksas go much deeper. As Amita Arudpragasam wrote in FP last week, both Rajapaksa brothers have played their part in destabilizing the economy by tolerating corruption and saddling the country with unpayable debts.
Throughout, the Rajapaksas have leaned on the Sinhalese Buddhist majority to prop up their government while demonizing the minority Tamil and Muslim populations. Now that the Sinhalese Buddhists have joined the protests in large numbers, “the foundation of lies and racism on which the Rajapaksas have built up their political legitimacy is slowly crumbling,” Arudpragasam wrote.
For Senanayake, the protests could yet lead to period of broad-based—rather than elite-dominated—national renewal. The wider public “never actually took part in the process of nation-building, even in the period that led to independence in 1948,” Senanayake said. “This is the first time they have come together to organize, mobilize, and make demands as per their democratic rights at this scale.”