Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan Crisis Nirmala Rajasingam is an organiser with the Movement for People’s Struggle Sri Lanka (UK) which has been organising protests in London in solidarity with the Sri Lankan people, and a long-term activist with South Asia Solidarity Group. Can you give a very brief overview of the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, its causes and the kinds of effects it has had on different sections of working people? The Sri Lankan Government declared the country bankrupt in April 2022, and defaulted on its external debt payments as it ran out of dollar reserves. The acute  shortage of food, fuel and medicines brought the desperate Sri Lankan people to the streets in their millions and they drove the President Gotabaya Rajapakse and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse from of...

BY KENNETH SURIN 2022 Sri Lankan economic crisis, people wait for long time to refill liquefied petroleum gas cylinders. Photograph Source: AntanO – CC BY-SA 4.0 Sri Lanka, an island of 22 million people, continues to be in the grip of its worst economic and political crisis since independence on 10 February 1948. Since April there have been protests against extensive shortages of food and fuel, as well as a profound crisis of trust in Sri Lanka’s political institutions, primarily parliament and the presidency (both have faced repeated charges of corruption and nepotism for decades, a situation unable to be surmounted by a cowed judicial system). The heart of the anti-government movement, at this point, was a demand for the resignation of the strongman president Gotab...

BYAmy Goodman & Juan González, Democracy Now! Thousands of protesters in Sri Lanka have stormed the homes of the president and prime minister and are refusing to leave until they officially resign, as the president faces accusations of corruption that bankrupted the country and led to a massive economic crisis. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is set to formally step down Wednesday and has reportedly tried to flee the country. We go to the capital Colombo to speak with Bhavani Fonseka, a human rights lawyer and a senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, who has been participating in the protest. She describes the months of peaceful protest that led to this moment. “Considering the crisis and considering the demands of the people that there has to be a change, we nee...

By: Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio Introduction by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio I’m honored to receive and publish an appeal signed by distinguished Sri Lankan academics, also signed by our correspondent from Indo-Pacific Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake. In it, he highlights the very serious situation of the country and suggests some solutions to protect it from the economic disaster favored by the West. Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, is a Social and Medical Anthropologist, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Coalition for Economic Democracy in Sri Lanka (CEDSL) is a group of concerned academics, activists, agricultural, fisheries and industrial workers, students, business persons, trade unionists, and professionals based ‘in country’ and overseas, including the dias...

The island nation of Sri Lanka is enduring its worst-ever economic crisis since its formal release from British colonial rule in 1948. For months, petrol, diesel, gas, food and medicine have been in very short suppy and have risen astronomically in price, as has the cost of transport. People are compelled to wait in long queues to get the essentials. Every day there are power cuts lasting for hours because of lack of fuel for thermal power plants. The Sri Lankan masses are placing the blame fairly and squarely on the government that is led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of a previous Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa who is currently the prime minister. Cause of the economic crisis in Sri Lanka To be fair to the Rajapaksas (not that they deserve it), Sri Lanka...

By Asoka Bandarage Global Research, Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities. Notwithstanding the austerities that would be entailed, a bail out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accepted as the only way out of the dire economic situation. Opposition political parties and citizens across the country blame the Rajapaksa government’s widespread corruption and mismanagement for the crisis, and demand that the President and the Parliament resign.  The Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa did so on May 9th, 2022. However, the protesters at...