Vindhya Buthpitiya
November 29, 2024
Colombo’s Galle Face Green, once imagined as a preserve of colonial leisure and continually configured as such through tourism investments, has been central to significant acts of public protest in postcolonial Sri Lanka. Its proximity to the heart of post/colonial governance, finance and military, forming the infrastructural and administrative core of the state, is integral to this. Even with the island’s parliament and legislative capital being relocated to Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte in the 1980s, Galle Face and extended Colombo Fort are principal to the workings and aesthetic of the executive and economic power, and expressions of opposition.
Galle Face Green, August 2024 (Vindhya Buthpitiya)
Galle Face has endured through Sri Lanka’s recent history as an illuminating microcosm of the island’s commercial capital. Despite efforts to regulate public access, including a now-defunct state-designated ‘agitation site’, the oceanside common remains a singular space where people can freely gather. The area has been regularly recomposed from protest grounds to state military pageants and festive venue, in keeping with the entangled post/colonial interventions in urban development, tourism promotion and militarization. It has long spoken to the spatial-material dynamics of state-citizen relations and how state power, in material and immaterial form, is exerted over citizens in frequently violent intermediations – both structural and spectacular.
Drawing on ongoing field research on the visual-material residues of political violence and state terror in the city of Colombo, I use Galle Face Green as a point of departure to reflect on the persistent effects and remnants of crisis, how mass protest and its aftermath resulted in a year of seismic electoral outcomes and claims of political reinvention, and the persistence of the state as governments change hands.
August 2024
Galle Face Green bustled brightly between the waters of the Indian Ocean and tall steel and glass five-star hotels and luxury residences. Here, the city’s wealthy, locals and expatriates, rubbed shoulders with affluent tourists whom the government continued to assure would solve the island’s enduring financial troubles. Collectively, in opulent lounges, bars, restaurants and lobbies, they perched above a very different life below—one stretched thinner and thinner by the slow but potent violence of a country in crisis. It was as if Sri Lanka’s marvellous revitalisation pinned to the stabilising force of President Ranil Wickremesinghe had already been realised. After all, there were no gas and petrol queues in sight. The newspapers rarely published bad news anymore. Student protesters now vilified by the government in the aftermath of the 2022 Janatha Aragalaya (People’s Struggle) who still dared to take to the streets were regularly attacked with tear gas and water cannons, but hardly afforded media attention. Sri Lanka’s privileged, satiated by gas, petrol and imported goods, had largely turned away from the agitators whom they had only fleetingly admired a mere two years ago. Government complexes including the adjacent Presidential Secretariat are blockaded and heavily guarded by armed police and military. People movement was closely monitored by the army and police, with units swiftly dispatched to deal with potential disturbances.
This moment, of course, was not Sri Lanka’s first parable of ‘recovery.’ Similar fables had been spun in 2009 when Sri Lanka emerged out of three decades of armed conflict with a state-led military victory mired in credible allegations of war crimes and grave human rights violations against its Tamil citizens. Even amid international demands for justice and government disingenuity, the island was bestowed the status of a miraculous ‘bright spot’ by international cheerleaders. It was said to be poised to achieve long-desired prosperity and development in its hopeful and unimpeded integration into the neoliberal world order. Fifteen years later, shockingly little progress has been achieved in-country for the island’s ethno-linguistic minorities, even on basic matters pertaining to the guarantee of language rights, let alone truth and accountability. Two years after the Janatha Aragalaya, the politicians responsible for the unrest, who are also directly implicated in atrocities relating to the end of the civil war, are yet to be investigated or indicted. They continue to live lavishly on entitlements funded by indebted public coffers. Successive governments have afforded their own firm protection at the cost of their citizens.
Yet, outside Colombo’s favoured sanctuaries, the symptoms of the intense, lingering hardships brought on by the cost of living crisis and inflation were impossible to ignore.
One did not have to look deep to find social and material signs of ruination brought about by prolonged economic disrepair and the effects of a state that had abandoned its most vulnerable urban residents. Famished wage labourers begged for food after the end of their back-breaking shifts through sun and rain. Vegetables were unaffordable. Fish, eggs and protein sources had become indulgences. UNICEF notes that 1 in 2 children in Sri Lanka were going hungry with millions at the serious risk of malnutrition. A September 2024 report of the Parliament Select Committee appointed to examine child malnutrition in Sri Lanka observed that 74% of households could not buy food or daily essentials in the preceding six months. Long lines of those seeking to obtain passports still formed every day, and sometimes through the night, outside the Department of Emigration and Immigration, where people made desperate bids to find employment abroad. Teachers expressed alarm at the high rate of school dropouts, where parents could not afford books, uniforms and shoes and their children were going without meals. By November 2023, over 800 rural schools had been closed. Poverty had drastically increased from 11% in 2019 to nearly 26% in 2024, indicating that over a quarter of the Sri Lankan population was facing severe hardship. The interim government, fixated on Sri Lanka’s image as safe for investors, demands its citizens smile for dollar tourists, treating economic hardship and rampant corruption as dirty laundry.
Daytrippers, December 2023 (Vindhya Buthpitiya)
At Galle Face, still daily, lovers hiding under umbrellas and groups of friends and families, kite flyers, paper pinwheel and betel leaf sellers, bubble blowers and evening strollers congregate to touch the water and watch the evening sun dip into the sea. The smattering of remaining food vendors had been moved into out-of-sight subterranean bunker shopfronts that do not clutter seamless penthouse ocean views. The iconic Galle Face prawn vadai seller carts that allegedly did not conform to public health and imagined aesthetic codes were spurned by government order earlier this year, pointing to urban communities being pushed into further adversity. School children in bright white uniforms from faraway towns arrive in buses to see the capital, their day out ending in queues in front of Port City as slick European cars and SUVs glide in and out of its gates. Opened to the public in 2022, this Special Economic Zone built on debt and reclaimed land, affords a glimpse into a dazzling Colombo that could be. The private-public partnership, anchored to a 99-year-lease, was envisioned as a part of the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the result of a $1.4 billion investment by the China Harbour Engineering Company. It proffers high-priced exclusivity: a yacht marina, ritzy bars and restaurants, an artificial beach, a newly opened duty-free mall, opulent waterfront resorts and even a planned racing track. It is a satellite city and privileged urban dream that does not belong to the queuing children or citizens at large of a country mired in stifling debt and crisis dressed over by further debt – just as these citizens were never to belong within the swanky accommodations of this fantasy of unaffordable development.
Prawn Vadai Cart, December 2023 (Vindhya Buthpitiya)
The aftermath of the 2022 Aragalaya saw the swift suppression of dissent and public protest through the greater securitization of urban spaces. Seemingly inevitable commitments to taxation and austerity measures were made to satisfy the conditions of a $2.9 billion bailout by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and various debt restructuring agreements. As the Ranil Wickremesinghe-led government and its elite backers courted foreign investment and tourist spending as a cure-all, working citizens continued to be crushed by the economic burdens amassed over decades of corrupt decision-making, impunity and failures in accountability – both political and financial.
Protest Remains, Galle Face, August 2024 (Vindhya Buthpitiya)
September 2024
In late September 2024, when the much-awaited presidential election finally arrived, with a tight, three-way race among incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya alliance’s Sajith Premadasa (the son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who held office from 1989 until his 1993 assassination), and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader and candidate of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led National People Power (NPP) Coalition. The JVP, a self-anointed Marxist-Leninist inspired group leaned heavily into Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in its transformation into a political party following two failed insurrections in 1971 and between 1987-1989 in a period known as the bheeshanaya (the terror), marked by extraordinary state violence that resulted in thousands of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The JVP/NPP had won just 3% of the votes in the 2019 presidential election where Gotabaya Rajapaksa achieved a substantial victory. Namal Rajapaksa—nephew of the ousted Gotabaya and son of the former President and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa—had also thrown his hat in the ring. In an expression of disillusionment with regard to the lack of progress on the Tamil national question, Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanethiran was put forward by a coalition of Tamil political parties and civil society groups. The ex-Tamil National Alliance MP with no chance of victory, personified a protest vote, critiqued as further fracturing the Tamil polity.
As the presidential election loomed, the city’s cracks were papered over with loud posters selling lofty, optimistic promises that could not hold up to any serious scrutiny. In a matter of weeks, Dissanayake emerged unexpectedly victorious, securing 42% of the vote leading to a first-ever second-count tally with runner-up Premadasa. The JVP/NPP had canvassed on a promise to achieve ‘system change’ by transforming the country’s corrupt political culture sustained by elitism, nepotism and strong disdain for those struggling economically. Yet, just as with his predecessors, Dissanayake’s victory was made possible by a structural advantage in the shape of the island’s Sinhalese voter base, pointing to the majoritarian character of election outcomes in Sri Lanka. The JVP/NPP had cultivated negligible support in the north and east in the past. With no Tamil or Muslim representation within its core leadership at the time, the JVP’s history of espousing a hardline Sinhalese nationalist stance, past hostility towards Tamils, and an ideological opposition towards Tamil nationalism (notably in its support for the Rajapaksas’ war effort) remained unaddressed by the party repackaged as a part of the NPP. Although Dissanayake aired verbal commitments to wiping out racism, justice and accountability for wartime violations and the ongoing grievances of the island’s Tamil-speaking communities did not factor into election campaigns this year. Commentators glibly posited this as an encouraging indicator of socio-political progress since the Janatha Aragalaya, as racist anti-minority sentiments hadn’t been mobilised with the usual explicit vigour during this election.
At a glance, the presidential election result appeared to be cleaved between the ethno-geographic Sinhalese political majority and minority with Dissanayake’s opponent, Premadasa, winning the north and east and hill country. Indeed, Dissanayake’s contentious message to voters in the north was interpreted as a warning against spoiling the “wave” of support for the NPP building in the south by prioritising ethno-nationalist demands over national unity. With Sinhalese supporters spreading anti-Tamil commentary via social media following the election result announcements, the island’s minorities watched national politics cautiously, as they always have.
November 2024
Two months later in a snap general election in 2024, the NPP secured what has been described as a momentous ‘super majority’ despite a historic low voter turnout. The JVP, which had twice failed to seize state power, emerged securely as the latest incarnation of the Sri Lankan state exceeding a 2/3 majority in parliament which will permit for comprehensive constitutional reform including keeping the party’s promise of abolishing the executive presidency. Arguably, the JVP has been most consistent in its demand for the transfer of state power from postcolonial elites to the (Sinhalese) masses rather than a more inclusive transformation of state power, which it has now resoundingly achieved through ground-level electoral mobilisation that yielded great success.
The party’s gains in the northern province have been lauded by supporters of the JVP/NPP as an indicator of national unity and transcending ethnic divides. However, it is difficult not to be struck by the words of commentators and party representatives alike in folding the electoral outcome into a trajectory and language of state unification and assimilation that has been long deployed by Sinhalese majority parties, especially following the 2009 military victory. It frames Tamil minority grievances as manufactured by divisive Tamil nationalist politicians, rather than the outcome of decades of direct and structural state violence and political marginalisation. Some have pointed to the failure of moderate Tamil parties to represent the interests of the Tamil polity, while others argue for the strengthening of Tamil nationalist ambitions for self-governance. Despite its promises to resolve ‘the ethnic problem’, if or how the NPP government plans to pursue matters of justice and accountability, the prosecution of war crimes or devolution through provincial councils as inscribed in the constitution’s 13th amendment, which the JVP has historically opposed, remains unclear. Similarly, the NPP government’s decision to abide by the conditions of the IMF agreement and its unwillingness to repeal the oppressive Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) which has been wielded against its own members in the past, point to an essential character of the Sri Lankan state that remains unchanged in spite of the vocal claims of a revolutionary upheaval of Sri Lanka’s political culture. In reality, the NPP has done little to earn the trust or confidence that they will be able to bring about positive changes for Sri Lanka’s mutable political minorities and dissidents besieged by state violence.
It is also essential to bear in mind that Tamil-speaking communities have always had a two-fold engagement with governance, where practical concerns of access, resources and safety are actively negotiated against an ideal of aspirations for self-determination. Election outcomes have always been swayed by survival votes that are determined by the short-term freedoms, mobility and material gains afforded by election cycles and promises, notably in facilitating access to the government. How these choices and political minority demands will be accommodated by a largely novice parliament with over 150 first-time MPs will serve as a test of its spoken commitments to inclusion and parity. However, it is also notable that in a monumental first, two Malaiyaha Tamil women, Krishnan Kaleychelvi (Nuwara Eliya) & Ambika Samuel (Badulla) from NPP were elected to parliament. This election also marks a record number of women MPs entering into parliament, as well as the appointment of MP Dr Harini Amarasuriya as Prime Minister, which has been widely supported and welcomed across political rifts.
While numerous, often contradictory readings of the Presidential and general election results have appeared since September– notably those highlighting Dissanayake’s status as a ‘Marxist,’ they all point to the result as signalling a desire for change and rejecting the status quo of national politics helmed for decades by elites and their patronage networks. It is, importantly, a step toward acknowledging the toll the past few years have taken on millions of Sri Lankan citizens. Following his electoral victory, Dissanayake ordered the reopening of the roads leading to the President’s House which had been closed following the 2022 Janatha Aragalaya in a gesture of goodwill to the public. However, following the parliamentary election, the new cabinet, which will ultimately determine the course of longed-for change amid dire economic conditions, did not shy away from the customary photograph at the front steps of the Presidential Secretariat building, in the party’s assumption into state and power. The view from where they sit is one of Galle Face Green separated by tall iron gates. As they embark on managing the enduring uncertainties and effects of crises past, present and future, the beginner cabinet looks ahead to the Green and its fluctuating publics. It remains both mirror and augur of an exhausted and hopeful citizenry’s mood. After all, Sri Lanka is no stranger to failed revolutions and what has become clear since 2022 is that its citizens, despite the state’s best and most violent efforts, have not hesitated to make their will known – by whatever means necessary.
Vindhya Buthpitiya is an anthropologist working at the intersection of politics and visual culture. Her research is focused on resistance, ethno-nationalist conflict, and political violence in Sri Lanka, examining the local and global aftermaths of civil war through the making and moving of images. Vindhya is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.
Latest Posts
- The Congo Cop through an Urban Lens
- Fables of Recovery and Revolution
- Myths and Hard Truths in the Latin American Security Landscape (II)
- Brazil’s Ongoing Struggle with Police Violence: Can Body-Worn Cameras Turn the Tide?
- Myths and Hard Truths in the Latin American Security Landscape
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the Word on the Street blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Urban Violence Research Network.