For the international media, it is a momentous show of ‘democratic revolution’ — tens of thousands of people across ethnic divides coming together in the wake of an unprecedented economic crisis. The Janatha Aragalaya, a massive citizen’s protest that has been underway in the island for several months, had recently led to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing an angry Sri Lanka, essentially bringing down the Rajapaksa regime. Just a few days ago, as the Sri Lankan armed forces stood by and watched, thousands of protesters had barged into the President’s residence in Colombo, raiding the kitchen, eating food and taking over the swimming pool. But the state, which has a dark history of violence against Tamil people and other minorities on its soil, is no longer willing to tolerate dissent even from the Sinhalas, without responding with violence. In a late-night clampdown that took place in the wee hours of July 22, Friday, the military and armed police unleashed a brutal assault at Galle Face in Colombo, where many anti-government protesters have been camping out for over three months. The BBC reports that hundreds of soldiers and commandos descended to forcibly clear the site, assaulting protesters as well as journalists.
Even as civilians in Colombo express shock and outrage, Tamils from the north and east of the country aren't surprised. For many of them, who have lived under increased militarisation and faced violence from the armed forces for decades, the romantic image of a Sri Lanka united against imperialism had rung hollow in the first place. As Thusiyan Nandakumar, editor-in-chief of the Tamil Guardian, points out that given the state’s Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, the current crisis is not economic, but political in nature. With Ranil Wickremesinghe orchestrating such violence less than two days after being formally sworn in as Sri Lanka’s new President on Thursday, “Tamils, who so far did not take part in the protests due to the scepticism that little would change, feel now that they may have been proven right,” says Thusiyan.
The correlation between Sri Lanka’s military overspending and the economic crisis the country finds itself in today is, unfortunately, still not spoken of enough. Military budgets, Thusiyan says, have historically been a large part of Sri Lanka’s expenditure. “From the beginning of these protests, there had been a fear among Eelam Tamils that the widespread slogans of ‘Gota Go Home’ were just going to result in a change in the figurehead of a very broken state structure; a structure that was not fit for purpose for many Tamils. One of the weaknesses of the protests is that all the blame is being placed only at the Rajapaksas’ door. The problem in Sri Lanka is not just them. It is rooted in how the state structure works. For instance, one of the reasons for Sri Lanka’s current economic crisis are massive defence spending and the military occupation of the north and east,” he says.
In fact, according to a recent report by the military magazine, Janes, up to 15% of the country’s total budget this year was proposed for defence allocation. That is 1.86 billion in USD. Another paper brought out by Daniel Alphonsus, Economic Advisor to Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister in 2019, also addresses the island’s issue of military overspending. According to this paper, up to 2.1% of the country’s GDP for the year 2021 was spent in defence.
Such overspending, Thusiyan points out, is focused primarily on the north and east. “It has been 13 years after the Mullivaikkal massacre, 13 years since the military’s defeat of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), but it continues to maintain a heavy presence in this region. They feel the need to do so because they are aware that Tamils still yearn for political freedom. This is essentially military occupation,” he says.
To emphasise the extent of militarisation of these areas, he refers to a report by the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR), a Jaffna-based think tank and People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL). The report shows that in parts of the Mullaitivu district, for example, there was as many as one soldier for every two civilians in 2017. “This would have made Sri Lanka one of the most militarised places in the world at the time. Such a degree of military presence means that soldiers are infiltrating every aspect of civilian life. There is no Tamil militancy now. So the military has instead occupied schools and hospitals. They are running barber shops, grocery stores or even tourist hotels. This undermines the local economies, who cannot compete with them,” he explains.
Ambika Satkunanathan, former Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, says that the issue of military spending and the matter of their involvement in civilian affairs have rarely been a concern for a majority of the populations in the south. “After some protesters were subjected to violence by the military, there has been some realisation — if this is happening in the south, what must be happening in the north and east? But it is not nearly enough,” Ambika adds. The issue of demilitarisation and lowering defence budgets has not appeared on anyone’s agenda still, certainly not among any of the southern political parties, she says.
Scepticism, fear of retribution particularly via the dreaded Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), stark memories of war crimes and genocide, and concerns whether the island nation’s political future will step back from Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism pervade the Tamil populations.
In an article for Al Jazeera, published in the early days of the Janatha Aragalaya, PEARL advisor Mario Arulthas had written that “Tamils do not want Gota to go home. They want him to go to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.” Speaking to TNM, he says that the era of the Rajapaksas may perhaps be over, but the same cannot be said about hardline Sinhala politics — the core reason why Sri Lanka is where it is today.
For Tamils in the north and east, this has been a major reason to stay away from the protests. “Even among those in Colombo, many did not join in,” Mario says. “They didn't consider this their fight - as they felt that none of the main Tamil political demands were reflected in the protests. They are of the opinion that as [the Sinhalas] had voted for Gota, they have to sort it out.” In 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was voted into power with an overwhelming Sinhala majority. The two presidential candidates — Sajith Premadasa and Gotabaya — had inspired little confidence among Tamils, but the north and east had still voted for Sajith as ‘the lesser of the two evils’, he points out.
Ambika is one of the Tamils in Colombo who has participated in the Janatha Aragalaya. But she is not without criticism for the protests. While she believes that the uprising needs to be credited for the stepping down of the Rajapaksas, she also feels that a greater political change — particularly in terms of Tamil concerns and needs — does not appear to be in the offing.
Usha, a Kilinochchi resident, points out to TNM that the north and the east have survived through similar restrictions during the war. “When there is no gas, we know how to cook with firewood. Without petrol, we have gone back to using cycles as we did in those years. Daily-wage labourers have reverted to the war-time barter system for essentials; some rice in exchange for a bit of game-meat. In the north and the east, we remember how to stretch rations meant for five days to 10. Or even 15.”
It is not as if the crisis doesn’t affect us, says Usha. “But the state reacts differently when we are out on the streets. We risk being arrested under PTA, something Sinhalas don’t have to fear,” she adds.
It is recollections of survival that inform Tamil memorial traditions related to the war. At the Mullivaikal memorial on May 18, Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day is observed with the serving of kanji (rice gruel). “At the time, there was little other food except a handful of rice and the water it was cooked in. With some luck, salt to taste,” says Kumanan Kanapathippillai, a survivor of the war and now a journalist based in Mullaitivu. “This collective memory, of the history of what Tamils lived through, is what is symbolised through the kanji served each year on that date. It is a memory of genocide.”
At the Janatha Aragalaya, a group of protesters at Galle Face observed May 18 alongside the serving of the kanji, a rare sight in the south. Yet, the protest site had failed to acknowledge the significance of the day. “The banners spoke of ‘all those lost in the war’. It made no mention of the fact that the date signifies horrors for Tamils specifically,” Kumanan says, pointing out how every banner in Mullaitivu will explicitly mention the genocide. “But that word was missing entirely at the Galle Face protest.”
Media reports covered the event as proof of a united Sri Lanka. But how can Tamils believe that these people, who cannot even bring themselves to say the word ‘genocide’, will care about the needs of those in the north and east, he wonders.
The Sri Lankan flags that have been populating the Janatha Aragalaya protest sites in large numbers has been another concern that put many Tamils off from extending solidarity to the protest. As Mario explains to TNM, for decades, Tamils have viewed the national flag as a symbol of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism. On a field of red, a sword-wielding lion — the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist emblem — faces two narrow strips of orange and green to represent the Tamil and Muslim ‘minorities’. This is viewed as deliberately hostile towards both communities, he explains. “The presence of the bo leaves in the corners is another Buddhist imagery, which ties in to the history of anti-Muslim and anti-Tamil violence in Sri Lanka. This was the same flag under which the Sinhala forces waged their war. Its overwhelming presence is a reinforcement of a country that privileges Sinhala-Buddhists,” says Mario.
The Sri Lankan national flag looms over a protest site. Image by special arrangement.
“This means the Tamils who do attend the protests have to accept, or at least tolerate, the Sinhala-Buddhist nature of the state and its symbols. But that flag continues to be used to enforce a notion of a singular, ethnocratic national identity.” In contrast, at the Tamil protests in the north-east, yellow and red or black flags are a common sight.
There is a disparity even in terms of who receives international media visibility, Ambika points out. “Compared to the 100 day protests in Colombo, little attention is given to the protests by the families of the disappeared, which has gone on for more than 2000 days,” she says. Kumanan too, observes that there has been some resentment over media representations of the Colombo protests in the south, in comparison to those led by Tamils for decades in the north and east. “For years, protests have been a way of life for us. But it was never viewed as ‘revolutionary’, at least not in the same way that the Colombo protests are being described by international media,” he tells TNM.
This is not to say that the economic crisis has left Tamils unscathed. Yardsan Figurado, director of a developmental organisation in Mannar, says that the fishermen in the area can barely go out to sea anymore. Their boats require 40-50 litres of fuel for one trip, he says, but now it is a struggle to even secure five litres. According to Yarsdan, a litre goes for up to 1,000-1,500 Sri Lankan rupees on the black market, an unimaginable sum for a fisherman. “Will they have to come back to land and sell their fish for the price of gold? How will they make any profits? Who in this crisis can afford to buy fish at even marginally higher rates than normal,” he asks.
But while beset by economic struggles, Tamils worry for their political future too. A statement put out by five Tamil civil society organisations in the wake of the current national crisis demands “meaningful restructuring of the constitution”, such as devolving power towards a more federal form of governance, demilitarisation of the north and east, repeal of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, justice for the disappeared, ratification of the Rome Statute, and the ceasure of land acquisitions by the military and security outposts in the north and east. And now, with Ranil Wickremesinghe formally elected as the new president, Tamils wonder what lies ahead for them.
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