Neloufer de Mel on the Current Economic, Social and Political Situation in Sri Lanka
The causes of the current societal, economic, and political crisis in Sri Lanka are complex. The immediate roots of the crisis are the local and global economic factors, fuelled by the popular protests against the corruption of the governing political elites. What does the ongoing crisis have to do with catastrophic or distant events like the COVID-19 pandemic or Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine? What role does foreign debt, especially indebtedness to China, play in the crisis? How does the fragile architecture of Sri Lanka's political economy and its dependence on remittances survive when funds are being siphoned off into foreign investments by the national elites? What are the prospects of civil society-led democratic reforms in the face of Sri Lanka's militarized political structures?
Democracy in Question? · Neloufer de Mel
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Show Notes
Guests featured in this episode
Neloufer de Mel, Senior Professor of English at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. Drawing on feminist scholarship, postcolonial and cultural studies, she has published extensively on Sri Lankan society, gender, justice. Neloufer has been awarded numerous prestigious fellowships and grants from the MacArthur Foundation, a Fulbright Scholarship at Yale, and the IWM in Vienna. Some of her books are: Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka, Gendering the Tsunami: Women’s Experiences from Sri Lanka, and Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in the Armed Conflict (2007).
GLOSSARY:
Who are the Rajapaksa Family?
(04:10, p. 1 in the transcript)
The Rajapaksa Family: Sri Lankan family, which has dominated the country’s politics for much of the past two decades. During Mahinda Rajapaksa's presidency, it was seen as one of the most influential families in the country with many of its members holding senior governmental positions. The Rajapaksas were briefly out of the government after losing in the 2015 elections, but they returned to power with Gotabaya Rajapaksa as their presidential candidate in 2019. He won and soon after brought his elder brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, back to the government as prime minister and handed key positions to several other members of the family. The popularity of the Rajapaksa family collapsed after their actions caused the economic crisis that started in 2019, resulting in Sri Lanka defaulting on its debt for the first time in its post-independence history. Source
What are the 2022 Sri Lankan protests?
(04:50, p.2 in the transcript)
Spring 2022 Sri Lankan Protests (also known as ‘Aragalaya’ – Sinhalese for ‘struggle’): A mainly youth-led mass protest movement over Sri Lanka’s worst-ever economic crisis. During the period, the protesters forced a president and a prime minister to resign, with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa even fleeing the country to escape the uprising. Tens of thousands of people hit the streets in Colombo, occupying important government buildings, including the official residences of the president and the prime minister. Source
What was the Sri Lankan Civil War?
(05:50, p.2 in transcript)
Sri Lankan Civil War: Political unrest, which escalated in the 1980s as groups representing the Tamil minority moved toward organized insurgency. Tamil bases were built up in jungle areas of the northern and eastern parts of the island and increasingly in the southern districts of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Tamil groups received official and unofficial support. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) — popularly known as the Tamil Tigers — was the strongest of these, but there were other competing groups, which were sometimes hostile to each other. The Sri Lankan government responded to the unrest by deploying forces to the north and the east, but the eruption of insurgency inflamed communal passions, and in July 1983 there were extensive organized anti-Tamil riots in Colombo and elsewhere. Sinhalese mobs systematically attacked Tamils and destroyed Tamil property, and the riots forced refugees to move within the island and from Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu. Source
What is the Galle Face Park?
(08:10, p.2 in transcript)
The Galle Face Green Park: a five-hectare ocean-side urban park, which stretches for a half kilometre along the coast. The area was occupied during the 2022 Sri Lankan Protests with the protesters establishing a ‘village’ named ‘Gotagogama’, or ‘Gota go village’, in Sinhala. Gota-Go-Gama has been set up (similarly to Occupy Wall Street) like a small model village, providing basic necessities, including free food, free water bottles, toilets as well as limited free emergency medical services. Source