Political elite and Sri Lankans’ Aragalaya

The United Nations and Global Human Rights Groups have condemned the repeated use of emergency regulations against peaceful protesters by the Sri Lanka government. The global community had urged the newly appointed Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe to end the crackdown against the months-long protests over the Island nation’s worst economic crisis in history. According to UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Mary Lawlor, the Wickremesinghe government uses rules, procedures, court orders, other tactics, and methods to prevent peaceful protests and public criticism. The global human rights defenders were of the view that the Sri Lankan government should listen to the protesters instead of trying to silence them.

Sri Lanka, a tourism-dependent prosperous economy hit by a horrific crisis of history due to the unending effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, unwise economic policies, and unjust subsidies of the family government in the Island nation. The freebies policy of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa depleted the foreign reserves of the country and the Sri Lankan government could not manage energy products to run the wheel of the national economy which led to a halt of factories, closure of businesses, unemployment, and wheel jam of vehicular traffic in the Island. The Sinhalese came on the road against the policies of the government.

The crisis-hit Sri Lankan nation initiated the “Aragalaya Movement” under which students, political activists, and critics of the Rajapaksa regime had been gathering at Colombo’s Gale Face Green coastal park over the past four months to protest the government policies and demand a change in the government.

The ruling elite is using brutal force to curb the protest through arbitrary arrests, detention, and intimidation of the protesters but failed to achieve its goal so far. In fact, political pandits are used to solve economic glitches through political recipes which appease the masses and hurt the state economy in the long run, while Sinhalese are habitual of freebies but not ready to share the burden of the government. Apparently, no Agaralya is a solution to economic tragedies while the dialogue is the only option for all crises in the world.