Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka: Cancel the debt

Sri Lankan workers are suffering from hyperinflation and severe shortages of basic essentials, including food, fuel and medicines. Acute shortages of foreign currency have made imported goods difficult for workers to obtain or afford. Inflation in December and January was over 50%. Food price inflation was 85% in October 2022. In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on over $50bn of debt to foreign creditors, including the Chinese, Indian and Japanese states. The IMF is refusing to release a $2.9bn bailout due to the failure of creditors and private external bond holders to agree to the...

Letter: The politics of collapse

Sri Lanka's "left" prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, 1970s Dan Katz ( Solidarity 659) shows us that the collapse of the strong Trotskyist movement in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the early 1960s was no marginal quirk. The world context may be part of it. By the late 1950s the orthodox Trotskyists, those who had stuck to it despite the adversities of the previous decade, had taught themselves to subsist on a perspective that “the world revolution” was despite everything advancing, in a deformed way. Its manifestation was Stalinist and nationalist revolts against US and West European imperialism...

Women, class struggle and the crisis in Sri Lanka

From March 2022, Sri Lanka was convulsed by protests against collapsing living standards and state authoritarianism, leading in July to the resignation of right-wing nationalist president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Niyanthini Kadirgamar, a member of Sri Lanka’s Feminist Collective for Economic Justice, explains how the current crisis in her country intersects with women’s oppression and women’s – particularly working-class women’s – struggles. The Feminist Collective for Economic Justice is a network collective of feminist economists, scholars, activists, university students and lawyers, working in...

Support Sri Lanka protesters against repression

On 9 July the biggest protests in Sri Lanka’s history overthrew the authoritarian nationalist government of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. His successor Ranil Wickremesinghe, appointed prime minister by Rajapaksa in May as a bland technocrat he hoped would be more acceptable to protesters, quickly unleashed a heavy wave of repression. As outlined in detail (5 August) by a coalition of international human rights organisations, Wickremesinghe has introduced a state of emergency in which protesters have been stigmatised as “terrorists” and over a hundred arrested; police granted sweeping powers...

Sri Lanka's protests and the fall of Rajapaksa

On 9 July fresh protests in Sri Lanka overthrew authoritarian nationalist president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. On 11 July Sri Lankan socialist feminist Niyanthini Kadirgamar explained how the movement has developed and the issues driving it. Now Ranil Wickremesinghe, the unpopular neoliberal politician “Gota” appointed prime minister in May, is president. Immediately on coming to office, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency. On 22 July thousands of police and soldiers attacked and cleared the Gota Go Gama protest site in Colombo, brutally beating dozens of people — despite the fact the...

"Ranil go home!": Sri Lanka's new president is anything but

Shortly after Sri Lanka’s authoritarian right-wing president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was overthrown (9 July) and fled the island (probably 13 July), Sri Lankan socialist feminist Niyanthini Kadirgamar told us : “On the 15th, the day Gotabaya Rajapaksa's resignation was finally announced, [Ranil] Wickremesinghe was sworn in as acting president until a parliamentary vote next week. If he is elected president then, it might well lead to further turmoil and protests.” As acting president, Wickremesinghe took to TV to call the protest movement in whose absence he would not have taken office a “fascist...

Gota goes. What next?

Images of protesters playing in the swimming pool of Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa have gone around the world. On 9 July, after the storming of Rajapaksa’s mansion, the demonstrations that have convulsed Sri Lanka since April achieved their central immediate goal, as he announced he would resign (on 13 July). In 2019 and 2020 the national-populist, Sinhalese-chauvinist coalition led by the Rajapaksas (his brother was prime minister when the protests began) won heavy election victories. Protesters have demanded the abolition of the executive presidency, whose history is bound up with...

Sri Lanka's prime minister forced out

On 3 April, following weeks of protests in Sri Lanka , the country’s entire cabinet resigned, except prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. On 28 April there was a general strike – the first since 1980. Now, following a second general strike last Friday, 6 May, with a week of union-organised protests set to culminate in a march on parliament on Friday 13th, Rajapaksa has resigned too. However, his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa remains executive president. Protesters are saying “Gota, go home”. Al Jazeera reports unions threatening an indefinite general strike to oust the president. Despite the power...

Sri Lanka's workers stand up

Sri Lanka’s working class has entered the fray against its right-wing nationalist government. Since 9 March the country has been swept by protests sparked by a deep crisis of the economy and living standards, causing the resignation of the cabinet (bar the prime minister) on 3 April. On 28 April trade unions organised a general strike to demand the resignation of prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his brother. From what I understand, there were already some strikes weeks ago as part of the protest movement. (Shortly before the movement began there were also...

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