Dying in Line: A Look into the Sri Lankan Protests

In the busy streets of Sri Lanka, winding lines grow longer as the day passes, and thousands wait hours to receive basic necessities like medicine, food, and fuel. After a searing day of queuing, protesters emerge onto the streets as the sun sets, protesting their government’s handling of an economic crisis. Their peaceful calls for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down are met with tear gas and water cannons. 

This has become the new reality for citizens of Sri Lanka amidst the worst economic crisis the country has seen since its independence in 1948. A result of mismanagement, outstanding foreign debt, and inflation has caused the country to face unprecedented humanitarian issues, including lasting electricity, fuel, and food shortages. 

Sanjeeva De Mel, a social worker in Sri Lanka who founded SERVE, a nonprofit working for poor women and children, explains the origins of this crisis. “This present crisis started a few months ago with gas [prices] exploding, non availability of milk powder, and the change of the dollar rate,” Del Mel said. “It has roots from one step to another but it started from very long term incidents—suppression, malpractice, mismanagement, wrong policies, and wrong investments.”

Sanjev DeSilva, who has Sri Lankan heritage and lived in Sri Lanka in 2012 doing post-war reconciliation workshops for Sri Lanka Unites, also elaborates on the political turmoil of the island state. 

“The current regime that controls Sri Lanka is kind of like a mafia family, known as the Rajapaksas,” DeSilva said. “Basically you have the president who was the former defense secretary. The prime minister is his brother. The cabinet—all these different powerful people—are all members of the family. And so they've been accumulating wealth and basically enriching their family while ruining the island's economy.”

President Rajapaksa’s 2019 election was cemented by his prominent role in ending the 26 year-long Sri Lankan Civil War as defense secretary in 2009. Immediately after, the country was hit by the 2019 Easter Bombings, a terrorist attack that killed 269 and injured 500, and the COVID pandemic soon followed. Now, despite facing the increasing consequences of his economical and political mismanagement, as well as the mounting civil protests for his resignation, Rajapaksa still refuses to step down. 

“This is now the first time in over a decade that they've been challenged in this way,” DeSilva said. “It's a clear message and people will cross all kinds of different boundaries to be united on this one message that this regime has got to go. So they're not gonna give it up peacefully and they're not gonna give it up happily, but the sustained energy of the protest has been critical to keep the pressure on.”

The protests, which have been going on for almost two and a half weeks, were started by a group of young activists. 

“They went and started protesting in front of Galle Face Green,” De Mel said. “That area is mainly a tourist area with five star hotels, a port, the president's house, and the prime minister’s house. Today’s the 19th or 20th day, they’ve been hanging there and protesting. The police try to control them but the lawyers and the bar association and the courts have been trying to ensure the right of expression and the right for them to protest.” 

“[The protests] have been extremely peaceful,” DeSilva added. “This has been one of the largest sustained demonstrations that have had no incidents of violence. The only violence that happened a couple times had been police that actually shot some protestors with live rounds. But besides those isolated incidents, it's been completely peaceful in a way that serves as almost a model of unity.”

Additionally, De Mel added his experience with the government suppression of these protests. 

“The government thought they should try and silence the protesters,” De Mel said. “They brought an emergency law—they can take anyone into custody without having a court case or normal process. The police officers are in power to basically take anyone into custody. When this happened, the political parties had a one-day campaign against the government. Then came the curfew, which means we can’t go out of the house.”

Besides the curfew, De Mel shares how his life has drastically changed since the beginning of this present crisis due to the mandated constraints on daily necessities. Even after living in Sri Lanka for over 50 years, he describes these as unprecedented living conditions. 

“In my life, the biggest problem has been the electricity cuts,” De Mel said. “Everyday, we have 3-4 hour power cuts, some days we have 6-7 hour cuts. Our working life became miserable. We don’t have a generator, we don’t have solar power. We don’t have access to our computers, so we try to do a little bit of handwritten work and discussions. But then we don’t have ventilation so it’s very tiring. In the houses, we always put up a fan, now I struggle with the heat. It’s very warm, and it’s not easy.”

De Mel also tells how extreme inflation has also become a huge challenge, especially with the donations SERVE has received. 

“A pair of shoes that we bought for a poor child was $20, now it’s $30 or more,” De Mel said. “Everything has gone up by ⅓ or more. Some of the funds we’ve raised before were projected for the old prices. Everything is very expensive.”

Seeing how Sri Lankan citizens have been affected by the consequences of administrative mismanagement, DeSilva believes that in order for the crisis to be solved, major governmental restructuring must be done.

“The biggest thing is this regime has got to be removed,” DeSilva said. “They've proven time and time again that they do not work in the interests of the people and that they are completely inept and not able to be leaders at all.”

But he still has hope for the future of this island. 

“I've never seen the country quite unified like this at all, ever,” DeSilva said. “We're all one people, but some people are very sectarian, so to see those sectarian borders being dropped down is pretty beautiful.”

De Mel agrees.

“I think we are a resilient set of people—even after the tsunami, we bounced back, even after the war, we bounced back in certain areas,” De Mel said, “We should be able to do it. . . . Each country and each nation has faced different challenges at different areas of time. As a nation, we have all come together. In the protests you don’t see any difference between ethnicities and religions. We should, as one set of people, move forward.”

And as the protesters have been chanting night after night: “Go home, Gota. Go home.”