Sri Lanka plunges into disaster, by Eric Paul Meyer (Le Monde diplomatique

The Rajapaksa household have been in energy in Sri Lanka for many of the previous 17 years; Mahinda Rajapaksa was president from 2005 to 2015 and his brother Gotabaya has occupied the highest job since 2019. Their help comes from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority (over 70% of the inhabitants) and was boosted by the military’s victory over the Tamil Tigers in 2009 ; in workplace, they’ve instrumentalised Buddhism and known as for a return to ‘cultural authenticity’, which is in reality a fantasy model of the nation’s pre-colonial previous.

Regardless of human rights abuses in opposition to Tamil separatists and Sinhalese opponents, their recognition endured. It additionally survived restrictions on the press and judiciary, the military’s rising function in public life, and favouritism and corruption among the many ruling clan. Gotabaya Rajapaksa received the 2019 presidential election and his social gathering secured an enormous parliamentary majority in August 2020. These victories eliminated the sting of Mahinda’s defeat in 2015 by an alliance of civil society activists and the outdated conservative-liberal United Nationwide Social gathering led by Ranil Wickremesinghe.

An element within the Rajapaksas’ success since 2015 has been their encouragement of extremist anti-Muslim Buddhist actions on the Burmese mannequin; Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority (8% of the inhabitants) have come to characterize the enemy inside, changing the defeated Tamil minority. The Easter bombings on 21 April 2019 focusing on resorts and Christian church buildings, which killed 258 folks together with 42 international nationals, served to strengthen such views; the Islamist group accountable had been on the intelligence companies’ radar, and Wickremesinghe’s authorities (2015-19) was blamed for laxity, though the fee of inquiry investigating whether or not authorities manipulation performed a job has been unable to finish its work.

The opposite pillar of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s regime is the military, the place he started his profession within the Nineteen Eighties, utilizing counter-insurgency methods in opposition to Tamil separatists and (…)

Full article: 1 998 phrases.

Eric Paul Meyer

Éric Paul Meyer is emeritus professor of the Institut Nationwide des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO). His most up-to-date e book is Une histoire de l’Inde: Les Indiens face à leur passé (A Historical past of India: the Indians in relation to their previous), Albin Michel, Paris, 2019.