In the middle of a crippling economic crisis, demonstrating is a luxury the country’s Tamil minority cannot afford
or months now, the sounds of protest and anger have rung out across Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city. Every day, along the city’s seafront promenade of Galle Face, people have gathered in their tens of thousands to rage against the government for plunging the country into its worst financial crisis in modern history.
Since then, many in Mullaitivu have not stopped demanding justice, accountability and political representation for Tamils. Among them is Mariasuresh Eswari, 49, whose husband, Mariyadas, a fisher, was taken by the navy in March 2009 as he went to collect his catch. He never came back. Mariasuresh Eswari points to her husband’s photograph, one of the thousands who disappeared in Mullaitivu during the war“Where were the protests in the south when the military killed and took away our families?” asked Eswari, as she recounted clambering over dead bodies with her children in her arms as they tried to flee to safety at the end of the war. “It’s easy for them to protest there, it’s not the same here. When I see the Colombo protests, all I see is discrimination.
There were fears that by joining the economic protests, other issues inflicted on the Tamils in the north, particularly around land, would be drowned out. The loss of Tamil land to military and government agencies is seen by many as a concerted effort to change the demography of the region.
Nonetheless, these efforts have all come up against issues exposing the continued ethnic segregation of the island. A Buddhist monk said on stage that the national anthem should only be sung in Singhala, and attempts were made to stop the Mullaitivu memorial on the basis that it was glorifying the Tamil Tigers.
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