The Prison Disrobing of Bhikku Gnanasara and the Capitulation of the JVP/NPP Government to the Buddhist Chauvinists

The Prison Disrobing of Bhikku Gnanasara and the Capitulation of the JVP/NPP Government to the Buddhist Chauvinists

By Sanjaya Jayasekera.

The disrobing of Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) leader Bhikku Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara under standard prison regulations—and the JVP/NPP government’s rapid political capitulation to the Sinhala supremacist outcry that followed—has exposed the reactionary character of the Dissanayake regime with unusual clarity. What is at stake is not the dignity of the Buddhist clergy, but the consolidation of Sinhala-Buddhist authority over the state—and, through the state, over the Tamil and Muslim minorities.

Bhikkhu Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara (right) invited Burmese ultra-right-wing monk Ashin Wirathu (left), dubbed the “Butcher of Burma” and leader of the anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya 969 and Ma Ba Tha movements, to a Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) rally in October 2014 and signed an agreement pledging “to make the entire south and Southeast Asian region a peaceful region devoid of all forms of fundamentalist movements, extremisms and civil or international wars” — an effective declaration of war against Muslims. Image courtesy of Colombo Telegraph. 

Conviction 

The re-arrest itself was the lawful enforcement of a conviction that the Sinhala-Buddhist establishment has spent years trying to evade. In 2016, the Court of Appeal convicted Gnanasara, General Secretary of the ultra-right, fascist Bodu Bala Sean (Buddhist Power Brigade), on four counts of contempt of court, stemming from his January 2016 disruption of proceedings in the Homagama Magistrate’s Court. The charges were damning: he had addressed the court without permission and obstructed its proceedings; he had declared in open court that he would not accept the court’s orders and that the law of the country should not be followed; he had directed the court to grant bail to state intelligence officials who were suspects in a case before it; and he had called the Senior State Counsel appearing for the prosecution an “impotent state officer.” He was sentenced to 19 years of rigorous imprisonment, to be served concurrently over six years. His appeals were finally exhausted when the Supreme Court refused special leave in October 2018.

Pardon

It was the Buddhist establishment itself that then intervened to place him above the law. In May 2019, President Maithripala Sirisena granted Gnanasara a full pardon—a pardon procured, as the Supreme Court’s judgment documents, by the direct requests of the Mahanayake Theros of the Malwathu, Asgiri, and Kotte Chapters of the Siyam Maha Nikaya, together with the Diyawadana Nilame of the Sri Dalada Maligawa. The chief prelates of the Maha Sangha have been lobbying to shield this convicted fascist from the consequences of his crimes since 2018. The present disrobing outcry is not a new eruption; it is the continuation of the same campaign.

Revocation

In September 2026, the Supreme Court—ruling on fundamental rights petitions filed by the Centre for Policy Alternatives and Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, and by Sandhya Ekneligoda, the wife of the missing journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda—declared that pardon unconstitutional and arbitrary. The Court held that Sirisena had acted mechanically, recording no reasons, and had thereby abdicated the exercise of his constitutional power; the pardon was, in the Court’s words, “arbitrary, in violation of the public trust and the rules of natural justice, ultra vires his powers.” The Court declared the pardon null and void, reinstating the conviction and sentence.

Disrobing

It was the application of standard prison standing orders—the disrobing of a convicted prisoner and his placement in civilian attire—that triggered the chauvinist outcry. The demand raised by the Maha Sangha, opposition politicians, and Sinhala chauvinist layers is that imprisoned monks be exempted from the ordinary law. The claim that disrobing falls under ecclesiastical authority (the Sangha Sabha) rather than the prison administration is, in substance, a claim that the Buddhist clergy stands above the criminal justice system—that the state must defer to the Sangha in matters touching its members. President Dissanayake’s rapid capitulation, convening an emergency meeting at the Presidential Secretariat and ordering a review of the legal and prison framework to permit imprisoned monks to wear robes, grants precisely this. It creates a distinct legal accommodation for the clergy that no ordinary prisoner enjoys.

This is not an isolated concession. It follows the government’s earlier pledge to establish separate courts for Buddhist monks, placing them outside the normal legal process. Each step deepens the institutional fusion of the state with Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism. The direction of travel is unmistakable: toward a state in which the Buddhist hierarchy is not merely a privileged social layer but a co-governing authority, and in which the law itself is bent to communal ends.

The campaign against minorities

The significance of this development can only be grasped in the context of the chauvinist campaign already being waged against Tamils and Muslims. The same forces now demanding special legal privilege for monks are the forces that have systematically attacked the democratic rights of the national minorities.

Against the Tamils, the government has moved to prohibit the commemoration of war heroes—the Maaveerar Naal remembrance of those killed in the civil war—arresting Tamil youth for attempting to honor their dead. The demand to suppress Tamil commemoration is a demand to erase the historical experience of the Tamil people, to criminalize their grief and their memory. Last month, the government forcibly removed a newly installed statue of Thileepan—the LTTE cadre who died during a hunger strike in 1987—from a site beside Nallur Kovil, following two weeks of commemorative activities by Tamils. Alongside this runs a campaign against the rights of Tamils over their traditional habitation, the lands of the North and East, which successive governments have sought to open to Sinhala settlement and military occupation.

Against the Muslims, the chauvinist campaign has taken the form of agitation over Muslim attire—the burqa ban and related provocations—and the propagation of conspiracy theories alleging that Muslims are plotting against the Sinhala race. These are not fringe phenomena; they are the stock-in-trade of the very man whose comfort the Maha Sangha now demands the state accommodate. Gnanasara is not a religious figure caught up in a legal technicality. He is a fascist provocateur who has spent his career inciting violence against the Muslim minority. It was his inflammatory speeches at an aggressive rally of the ultra-right, fascist BBS in Dharga Town in June 2014 that helped unleash the anti-Muslim pogroms in Aluthgama and Beruwala, in which chauvinist mobs attacked Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship, leaving multiple dead and hundreds of families displaced. The Rajapaksa regime of the time actively protected and enabled these fascist elements, censoring media coverage of the atrocities to conceal state complicity. Then, Gnanasara was instrumental in instigating the anti-Muslim pogrom in Digana, Kandy, in early March 2018. 

Far from their claim of combating terrorism, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara and Sinhala chauvinists actively nurtured it—creating the fertile ground of anti-Muslim hatred and violence that Zahran Hashim weaponized to mobilize the 2019 Easter Sunday bombers. This is not merely our analysis; it is the documented finding of the state’s own Presidential Commission of Inquiry. The PCoI Report on the Easter Sunday Attacks (2021) established that Gnanasara’s speeches “did not stop at targeting the Wahhabis ideology but went further targeting the Muslim community in general,” and that “some of his actions and utterances have contributed to Muslim youth taking to extremism and joining Zaharan.” The Commission found it “in evidence that Zaharan used the speeches and actions of the thero to rally support for his cause,” noting that Zahran’s final video—spelling out the reasons for the attack—made explicit reference to Gnanasara’s actions. The Commission concluded that Gnanasara’s conduct “resulted in reciprocal radicalization of Muslim youth,” recommended that the Attorney General consider criminal proceedings against him under the ICCPR Act for his 2013 Maharagama and 2014 Aluthgama speeches, and declared that the BBS “is a threat to religious harmony and that it should be proscribed.”

The chauvinists did not fight extremism; they bred it. Their pogroms, their conspiracy theories, and their relentless dehumanization of the Muslim minority supplied the very material that the bombers’ ideology drew upon. The Easter Sunday bombings, which killed nearly 300 people, were not an external assault on a peaceful society but the harvest of a communal poison that the Sinhala-Buddhist establishment had been cultivating for years—and which it then exploited, in the anti-Muslim witch-hunt that followed, to intensify its persecution of the very community it had victimized.

Gnanasara’s present imprisonment is not the first time the law has caught up with him. On March 28, 2024, the Colombo High Court convicted Gnanasara under Section 291B of the Penal Code for making intentionally offensive, inflammatory, and hate-filled statements against the Islamic faith and the Muslim community during a 2016 press conference in Colombo, sentencing him to four years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine. His present re-arrest, on a charge of contempt of court, is the continuation of a long criminal record of communal incitement. It is for this man—a convicted instigator of religious hatred and communal violence—that the Buddhist establishment now demands a legal accommodation placing the clergy above the law, and it is this demand to which the Dissanayake government has capitulated.

The disrobing affair must be seen as one more front in this same war. The demand that monks be placed above the law is the demand that the Buddhist clergy be recognized as the supreme authority of the Sinhala nation—and that the state enforce that supremacy against the minorities. It is the legal expression of the same ideology that drives communal pogroms, burns mosques, bans the burqa, and forbids Tamils from mourning their dead.

Why the capitulation?

The speed of the government’s surrender is the most revealing fact of all. Dissanayake did not resist, did not even attempt to defend the principle of equality before the law. He convened the Maha Sangha, heard their demands, and ordered the law changed. This is the behavior of a government that knows exactly where its political survival lies—and that is now calculating its position in the shadow of a global crisis of unprecedented dimensions.

President Anura Dissanayake participated in a special discussion with the Maha Sangha representing the three Nikayas at the Presidential Secretariat in the afternoon of Thursday, September, 8. Photo courtesy of President’s official Facebook page. 

The JVP/NPP is a right-wing, pro-imperialist party that has jettisoned every election promise to ruthlessly enforce IMF-dictated austerity. It has imposed savage cuts on living standards, aligned itself with US imperialism, and unleashed state repression against workers and students who oppose its agenda. It governs against the interests of the vast majority of the population, and it knows it. Its electoral base is not the working class but the Sinhala petty bourgeoisie and the chauvinist layers that the JVP has cultivated throughout its history.

But the government’s calculations cannot be understood in national isolation. The austerity it is enforcing is not a domestic policy choice; it is the local expression of a world crisis. The eruption of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran has deepened the global crisis of the capitalist system and enormously escalated the international class struggle, not least within the United States itself. The war, the breakdown of the post-war economic order, and the deepening global recession are driving every imperialist power to make the working class pay for the crisis—and the IMF is the instrument through which that burden is transferred to the toilers of the semi-colonial world. The austerity demands that the JVP/NPP is executing to the letter are the direct product of this global war and economic situation.

This is precisely what makes the government’s position so precarious. The same world crisis that compels it to impose austerity is also generating a surge of class struggle internationally—in the United States, in France, in India—as workers confront the attacks on their living standards. The international class struggle is rising, and the Sri Lankan working class is not insulated from it. On the contrary: the more ruthlessly the government enforces the IMF’s demands, the greater the potential for mass opposition at home. The government knows that the social disillusionment now spreading through the population can, under the impact of the global crisis, rapidly assume an explosive form.

It is against this backdrop that the capitulation to the Maha Sangha must be understood. Facing the growing potential of class struggle, the government calculates that it must appease the Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist elements to shield its state power from destabilization. The Buddhist clergy is the necessary tool of this strategy: it is the instrument through which the government mobilizes its chauvinist voter base, and—at moments of class struggle—the instrument through which it divides the working class along communal lines. The more dangerous the social situation becomes, the more indispensable this weapon appears to the ruling class.

This is the essential point. The working class of Sri Lanka is Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim. Its unity is the precondition for any struggle against austerity, against the IMF, against the capitalist system itself. The chauvinist campaign—the attacks on Tamil commemoration, the anti-Muslim agitation, and now the elevation of the Buddhist clergy above the law—has one purpose: to prevent that unity, to set Sinhala workers against their Tamil and Muslim brothers and sisters, and thereby to disarm the class as a whole at the very moment when the world crisis is driving it toward struggle.

The danger

The dangers of this development are large, and they are growing. The sequence of events is itself the indictment. A government that was, days ago, enforcing a Supreme Court ruling—a ruling that struck down an unconstitutional pardon and vindicated the fundamental right to equality—has now capitulated to the very forces that ruling was directed against. It has agreed to amend the law so that the convicted fascist it was imprisoning may retain the robes of his office behind bars. There is no concession it will not make, no principle it will not abandon, no minority right it will not sacrifice, if doing so secures its hold on power.

And the timing is no accident. The capitulation comes as the world crisis—the imperialist war against Iran, the deepening global recession, the surge of class struggle in the United States, France, and India—drives the government to enforce IMF austerity to the letter, and thereby drives the Sri Lankan working class toward struggle. It is precisely at such moments that the ruling class reaches for its communal weapon. The Buddhist clergy is the instrument through which the government mobilizes its chauvinist base and, when the class struggle sharpens, divides Sinhala workers from their Tamil and Muslim brothers and sisters. The more dangerous the social situation becomes, the more ruthlessly this weapon will be used.

The working class must draw the correct conclusion. It has no stake in the demand that monks be placed above the law. That demand is a weapon of communal reaction, not a defense of the oppressed. The answer to austerity and to chauvinism alike is the independent political mobilization of the working class—Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim—united against the government and the capitalist system it serves. Only the socialist transformation of society, which abolishes the material basis of all communal and religious oppression, can put an end to the chauvinist poison that the ruling class is now injecting into the body politic with renewed vigor.

#SLLA #theSocialistLK #ICFI #WSWS #BhikkuGnanasara #JVP

37 years since the Katuwana Massacre by Sri Lanka Army

Today marks the 37th annual commemoration of the Katuwana Massacre (1989).

It has been 37 years since the bloodthirsty state military murdered them as part of the Sri Lankan capitalist state's killing program. That night, they bombed their house, destroying the entire family including the young girl, the mother, and the native physician father, while the four young women were raped for days at the military camp, murdered, and forcibly disappeared. This was merely one massacre committed during that period of terror. Dozens of such massacres can be found in the Southern Province alone. Almost all of these were massacres carried out in an extremely brutal manner. The monsters, invading with full state privileges, destroyed and set fire to homes and all accumulated belongings overnight, hacked and stabbed people, dashed children on the ground, cut open the bellies of pregnant mothers, dragged out the fetus, smashed it on the ground, sliced fetus into pieces, cut off his penis, and stuffed it into the dying mother's mouth. The Asian Human Rights Commission analyzed that all of this was carried out with extreme systematic training and formality, representing the implementation of the "Jakarta" method, for which the government received assistance from the Israeli Mossad. Its aim was to terrorize workers, villagers, and youth, to abruptly end the youth uprising, and to consolidate the military-dictatorial regime.

Family commemorated the massacred relatives 36 years after on 27 August 2025 at the crime site 

To learn about any of these killings back then, the public had only foreign media such as "Veritas." Journalists were killed and all media was suppressed, while mainstream corporate media and state media acted as trumpets for the Premadasa regime. Although the massacres in Gaza are visible before our eyes today, poor Sri Lankan villagers back then had no facilities such as social media, photography, or video recording.

Every government that subsequently came to power in Sri Lanka acted to cover up the scale and nature of these crimes. None of the commission reports published after 1994 refer to or report these massacres as such. The Manouri Muttetuwegama Commission sent the President a “confidential” list containing the names of the killers, including the military leaders responsible for these crimes, but no government—including the current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) government—has made these names public to this day. No organization claiming to stand for the disappeared has acted to write down, record, publish, and preserve these cruel experiences and stories of the relatives of the disappeared, nor to convey this historical knowledge to future generations. Governments are afraid of this history because historical truth stands against the capitalist state.

This is also the policy of governments of the South regarding the crimes committed in the North. They turn the crimes of the LTTE to their advantage while concealing the crimes of state armed forces and state-backed paramilitary groups in the North and East, as well as the crimes—including massacres—of the JVP or UNP in the South. They do so to prevent the young working class from being educated by it and to prevent the exposure of their own crimes.

Preserving the living testimony of this historical experience in both southern and northern societies, without letting it die out and fade away, is an essential necessity for the consciousness of the working class. Let us preserve the records of these crimes committed against your relatives and families in the North, East, and South. Write your story to us at theSocialist.lk.

#KatuwanaMassacre #theSocialistLK #SLLA

Katuwana Massacre: Relatives commemorate victims after 36 years of intimidation and continuing impunity

ආණ්ඩුවේ හමුදා සිදුකළ කටුවන සමූල ඝාතනයට වසර 37යි

කටුවන සමූල ඝාතනයේ (Katuwana Massacre -1989) 37 වන වාර්ෂික ස්මරණය අදයි. ශ්‍රී ලංකා ධනපති රාජ්‍යයේ ඝාතක වැඩසටහනේ කොටසක් ලෙස ලේ පිපාසිත රාජ්‍ය හමුදාව ඔවුන් මරා දමා අදට වසර 37කි. එදින රෑ ඔවුන්ගේ නිවසට බෝම්බ ගසා කුඩා දැරිය, මව හා වෙද පියා ඇතුලු පවුලම විනාශ කළ අතර තරුණියන් සිව්දෙනා දින ගණනක් හමුදා කඳවුරේ දූෂනය කොට මරා අතුරුදහන් කෙරුණි. මේ ඒ භීෂණ සමයේ සිදුකළ එක් සමූල ඝාතනයක් පමණි. දකුණු පළාතේ පමණක් මෙවැනි සමූලඝාතන දුසිම් ගණනක් සොයා ගත හැක. මේ සියල්ලම පාහේ අතිශය අමානුෂික අන්දමින් සිදු කළ සමූල ඝාතනය. සියලු රාජ්‍ය වරප්‍රසාද සහිතව ආක්‍රමණය කරන රාක්ෂයෝ ගේදොර ඇතුලු සියලු ගොඩනගා ගත් දේ එක රැයින් විනාශ කොට ගිනි ලා, මිනිසුන් කපා කොටා, දරුවන් පොලොවේ ගසා, බඩ දරු මව්වරුන්ගේ උදරය කපා දරුවා එළියට ඇද පොලොවේ ගසා පෙති ගසා ඔහුගේ ශිෂ්ණය කපා මියදෙමින් සිටින මවගේ කටේ ගැසුවෝය. මේ සියල්ල ඉතා ක්‍රමාණුකූලව පුහුණුවකින් හා විධිමත් භාවයකින් කරන ලද අතර මෙම ක්‍රමය “ජකාර්තා” ක්‍රමය ක්‍රියාවට දැමීමක් බවත්, ඉශ්‍රායල් මොසාඩ් සහාය රජය ලබාගත් බවත් ආසියානු මානව හිමිකම් කොමිෂම විශ්ලේෂණය කළේය. කම්කරුවන්, ගම්මුන් හා තරුණයින් ත්‍රාස ගැන්වීම, තරුණ නැගිටීම කෙටියෙන් අවසන් කිරීම හා මිලිටරි-ඒකාධිපති ක්‍රමය තහවරු කිරීම එහි අරමුණ විය.

2025 අගෝස්තු 26 දින පැවති වසර 36 කට පසු පැවැත්වූ සැමරුම 

මේ ඝාතන කිසිවක් ගැන දැන ගැනීමට එදා ජනතාවට පැවතියේ “වෙරිටාස්” වැනි විදෙස් මාධ්‍යක් පමණි. මාධ්‍යවේදීන් මරා දමා සියලු මාධ්‍ය මර්දනය කරනු ලැබ පැවති අතර ප්‍රධාන ධරාවේ සංගත මාධ්‍ය හා රජයේ මාධ්‍ය ප්‍රේමදාස පාලනයේ හොරණාවන් ලෙස ක්‍රියා කළේය. අද ගාසාවේ සමූලඝාතන අපේ ඇස් ඉදිරිපිට පෙනෙන නමුදු, සමාජ මාධ්‍ය හෝ ඡායාරූප ගැනීමේ හෝ වීඩියෝගත කිරීමේ කිසිදු පහසුකමක් ලංකාවේ දුප්පත් ගම්මුන්ට එදා පැවතියේ නැත. 

ලංකාවේ ඉන් අනතුරුව බලයට පත් සෑම ආණ්ඩුවක්ම මෙම අපරාධවල ප්‍රමාණය හා ස්වභාවය යටගැසීමට කටයුතු කළෝය. 1994න් පසු පැවැත්වනු කොමිෂන් සභා වාර්ථා කිසිවක මේ සමූල ඝාතන එසේ හඳුන්වා ඒ ආකාරයෙන් වාර්ථා කරන්නෙ නැත. මනෝරි මුත්තෙත්ටුවේගම කොමිෂම මේ අපරාධ වලට මුල් වූ හමුදා නායකයන් ඇතුලු ඝාතකයන්ගේ නම් සහිත ලැයිස්තුවක් ජනාධිපතිට රහසිගතව යවා ඇති අතර වර්තමාන ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ ආණ්ඩුව ඇතුලුව කිසිදු ආණ්ඩුවක් මේ නම් ගම් අද දක්වා ප්‍රසිද්ධ කර නැත. අතුරුදහන් වූවන් වෙනුවෙන් පෙනී සිටියා යැයි කියන කිසිදු සංවිධානයක් අතුරුදහන් වූවන්ගේ ඥාතීන්ගේ මේ කුරිරු අත්දැකීම්, කතා ලියා තබා, පටිගත කොට ප්‍රසිද්ධ කිරීමට හා සංරක්ෂණය කිරීමටත් ඒ මගින් අනාගත පරම්පරාවන්ට මේ ඓතිහාසික ඥානය ලඟා කිරීමටත් ක්‍රියා කර නැත. ආණ්ඩු මේ ඉතිහාසයට බයයි. ඒ, ඓතිහාසික සත්‍ය ධනපති රාජ්‍යයට එරෙහිව පිහිටන බැවිනි. 

උතුරේ සිදුකළ අපරාධ සම්බන්ධයෙන් ද දකුණේ ආණ්ඩුවල පිළිවෙත මෙයයි. ඔවුහු LTTE යේ අපරාධ තම වාසියට හරවා ගන්නා අතර, උතුරේ හා නැගෙනහිර දී හමුදාවේ හා රාජ්‍ය සහය ලැබූ පැරා-මිලිටරි කණ්ඩායම්වල ද, දකුණේ JVP හෝ UNP හි සමූල ඝාතන ඇතුලු අපරාධ ද වසන් කරති. එසේ කරන්නේ තරුණ කම්කරු පන්තිය එයින් අධ්‍යාපනගත වීම වැලැක්වීමට හා තමන්ගේම අපරාධ හෙළිදරව් වීම වැළක්වීමටය. 

දකුණේත්, උතුරේත් ජනසමාජ වල මේ ඓතිහාසික අත්දැකීම සහිත ජීවමාන සාක්ෂි මියදී වියැකී යාමට නොදී රක්ෂණය කිරීම කම්කරු පන්තියේ සවිඥානකත්වයේ අත්‍යවශ්‍ය අවශ්‍යතාවයකි.  උතුරේත්, නැගෙනහිරත්, දකුනේත් ඔබේ ඥාතියාට, පවුලට සිදුවූ මේ අපරාධ පිළිබඳ වාර්තා සංරක්ෂණය කරමු. ඔබේ කතාව theSocialist.lk අපට ලියන්න.

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කටුවන සමූලඝාතනය: වසර 36ක බිය ගැන්වීම්වලින් සහ අඛණ්ඩ දණ්ඩමුක්තියකින් පසු ඥාතීහු වින්දිතයන් අනුස්මරණය කරති

උතුරු-දකුණු පාලම

උතුරු-දකුණු පාලම: අතුරුදහන් වූවන්ගේ දිනය නිමිත්තෙන් මාතර දී අතුරුදහන් වූ තැනැත්තන් පිළිබඳ කාර්යාලය (Office on Missing Persons) විසින් සංවිධානය කරන ලද රැස්වීමේ දී පවත්වන ලද කථාව — 2026 අගෝස්තු 25

සංජය ජයසේකර විසිනි.

අතුරුදහන් වූවන්ගේ ජාත්‍යන්තර දිනය සලකුණු කිරීම සඳහා අතුරුදහන් වූ තැනැත්තන් පිළිබඳ කාර්යාලය (OMP) විසින් සංවිධානය කරන ලද රැස්වීමෙදී, බලහත්කාරයෙන් අතුරුදහන් කරවනු ලැබූවන්ගේ දෙමාපියන් සහ ඥාතීන්ගෙන් සමන්විත සභාව හමුවේ මම මෙම කථාව සිංහලෙන් පැවැත්වූවෙමි.

මම මගේ පෞද්ගලික කතාවෙන් ආරම්භ කළෙමි. මම ඔවුන් අතරින් එක් අයෙකු වෙමින් අදහස් දක්වන බව සභාවට පැවසුවෙමි. මගේ මවගේ දෙමාපියන්, ඇගේ සහෝදරියන් සිව්දෙනා සහ මගේම නැගණිය ඇතුළු මගේ පවුලේ සාමාජිකයන් හත්දෙනෙකු, ප්‍රදේශයේ දේශපාලනඥයන්ගේ අනුදැනුම ඇතිව, 1989 අගෝස්තු 27 දින, කටුවන හමුදා කඳවුරේ 6 වන සිංහ රෙජිමේන්තුවේ (Sinha Regiment-6) හමුදා සබලුන් විසින් සමූල ඝාතනය කරන ලදී. එවිට මගේ නැගණියට වයස අවුරුදු 6ක් වූ අතර මට වයස අවුරුදු 8ක් විය. මගේ මව ද සභාවේ සිටියාය. පසුව බෙලිඅත්ත පොලිසිය විසින් වෙඩි තබා ඝාතනය කරන ලද, ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ (JVP) ක්‍රියාකාරිකයෙකු වූ මගේ මාමා අල්ලා ගැනීමට අපරාධකරුවන්ට නොහැකි වූ නිසා මෙය සිදු කළ බව මම ඔවුන්ට පැවසුවෙමි.

එම යුගයේ පැවති රාජ්‍ය භීෂණය මම නැවත මතක් කළෙමි: ටයර් සෑයවල්, හිස නැති මළසිරුරු, ගංගා දිගේ පා වී ගිය මළසිරුරු. මගේ දෙමාපියන් පොලිස් පැමිණිල්ලක් කිරීමට උත්සාහ කළ ආකාරයත්, පොලිසියෙන් ඔවුන්ට මුහුණ දීමට සිදු වූ හිරිහැරත් මම විස්තර කළෙමි. ඝාතනය කරන ලද අපගේ ඥාතීන් අටදෙනා සැමරීම වසර තිස්හයක් තිස්සේ මගේ පවුලට අහිමි කළේ කෙසේද යන්නත්, ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ ශෝකය පළ කිරීමට හෝ සාධාරණය ඉටු කර ගැනීමට බිය වූයේ මන්ද යන්නත් මම පැහැදිලි කළෙමි — එම බිය රටේ කම්කරු පන්තියට එරෙහිව හමුදාවේ බලය තර කරනු ලැබූ උතුරු-නැගෙනහිර යුද්ධය සමග බැඳී පැවති, නොනවත්වා පැවති රාජ්‍ය භීෂණය, තර්ජන සහ මර්දනය තුළ මුල් බැස තිබුණි. මා ඇතුළු තම දරුවන්ගේ ආරක්ෂාව ගැන මගේ දෙමාපියන් බිය වූහ.

ඉන්පසු, හමුදාවට ශාප කිරීමට පවා අපට ඇති අයිතිය අහිමි කළේ කෙසේදැයි මම සභාවට පැහැදිලි කළෙමි — එනම් මෙම අමානුෂික ක්‍රියා සිදු කර, තවත් ජනසමාජයකට එරෙහිව තවත් සමූල ඝාතන සිදු කිරීම සඳහා වහාම උතුරට යවන ලද එම හමුදාවටමය. දෙමළ දුප්පත් ජනතාවගේ පීඩාව ද අපගේ පීඩාවට සමාන බව මම ඔවුන්ට පැවසුවෙමි. ගෞරවය උදෙසා සහ වෙනස්කොට සැලකීමට එරෙහිව දෙමළ ජනතාව ගෙන ගිය අරගලය මර්දනය කිරීමට සහාය දැක්වීම සඳහා දකුණේ ජනතාව මතවාදීව සූදානම් කිරීමට ශ්‍රී ලංකා පාලක පන්තිය තම බලයේ ඇති සියල්ල කළ ආකාරය මම පැහැදිලි කළෙමි. ඉන්පසු, පවතින වාර්ගික වෙනස්කොට සැලකීම, විශ්ව විද්‍යාල කෝටා ක්‍රමය, වාර්ගික කෝලාහල (pogroms), යාපනය පුස්තකාලය ගිනි තැබීම, සහ අනෙකුත් අමානුෂික ක්‍රියා, දෙමළ තරුණයන් — එනම් තම ජනයාගේ දුක්ඛිත තත්වය ගැන අවංකවම කනස්සල්ලට පත් වූ, සහ තමන් සහ තම ජනතාව දශක ගණනාවක් තිස්සේ විඳදරාගත් ආර්ථික අයිතිවාසිකම් අහිමි කිරීමට සහ වාර්ගික වෙනස්කොට සැලකීමට එරෙහිව සටන් කිරීම සඳහා සයනයිඩ් කරලක් පැළඳීමට පවා සූදානම්ව සිටි තරුණයන් — සංවිධානයට බඳවා ගැනීමට බෙදුම්වාදී එල්ටීටීඊ (LTTE) සංවිධානය ප්‍රයෝජනයට ගත්තේ කෙසේදැයි මම පැහැදිලි කළෙමි.

දකුණේ තරුණ නැගිටීම් ඇති කිරීමට හේතු වූ ආර්ථික කොන්දේසිවලටම මම මෙය සම්බන්ධ කළෙමි. එම කොන්දේසි, ඒකීය ධනපති රාජ්‍යය ආරක්ෂා කිරීම සඳහා ජාතිකවාදී, දෙමළ විරෝධී සිංහල ස්වෝත්තමවාදය (Sinhala chauvinism) ගොඩනැගීමට ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණ (JVP) විසින් ප්‍රයෝජනයට ගන්නා ලදී. උතුරු-නැගෙනහිර යුද්ධයේ අවසන් අදියරේදී ඉන් පීඩාවට පත් වූ ජනතාව (හිටපු LTTE සාමාජිකයන් ඇතුළුව) සමග මම පැවැත්වූ පෞද්ගලික සංවාද වලින් මම ජීවමාන සාක්ෂි ඉදිරිපත් කළෙමි. යුද්ධය අවසන් වීමෙන් දෙමළ ජාතික ප්‍රශ්නය විසඳී නොමැති බවත්, යුද්ධය අවසන් වී වසර දාහතකට පසුවත් ගෞරවය උදෙසා සහ වෙනස්කොට සැලකීමට එරෙහි ඔවුන්ගේ කිසිදු අයිතිවාසිකමක් තහවුරු වී නොමැති බැවින්, දෙමළ ජනතාව තවමත් ධනපති රාජ්‍යයට එරෙහිව තම ජාතික අයිතිවාසිකම් විශ්වාස කරන බවත්, ඒ වෙනුවෙන් තවමත් සටන් කරන බවත් මම සෘජුවම ප්‍රකාශ කළෙමි.

ඉන්පසු මම අතුරුදහන් වූවන්ගේ පවුල්වල අයිතිවාසිකම් වෙත යොමු වූවෙමි. මතක තබා ගැනීමට, ශෝක වීමට සහ ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ ස්මරණය කිරීමට ඇති අයිතිය — එනම් ඔවුන් දැනටමත් පෞද්ගලිකව සෑම දිනකම, සෑම මිනිත්තුවකම භුක්ති විඳින අයිතිවාසිකම් — මම අවධාරණය කළ අතර, අවම වශයෙන් වසරකට වරක්වත් තම අතුරුදහන් කෙරුණු ඥාතීන් ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ සමරන ලෙස මම ඔවුන්ගෙන් ඉල්ලා සිටියෙමි. තම ඥාතීන්ට සිදු වූයේ කුමක්ද යන්න පිළිබඳ සත්‍යය දැනගැනීමට ඔවුන්ට ඇති අයිතිය සහ තවමත් ජීවත්ව සිටින අපරාධකරුවන්ට එරෙහිව යුක්තිය ඉටු කර ගැනීමට ඇති අයිතිය: එනම් දණ්ඩමුක්තියට (impunity) එරෙහි ඔවුන්ගේ අයිතිය මම අවධාරණය කළෙමි. මම ඒ අපරාධකරුවන් නම් කළෙමි — එනම් හමුදාව, එකල පැවති ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ (JVP) ෆැසිස්ට් නායකත්වය, එකල පැවති LTTE නායකත්වය, ඉන්දියානු සාම සාධක හමුදාව (IPKF), කරුණා-පිල්ලෙයාන් කල්ලිය (Karuna-Pillayan faction) සහ අනෙකුත් අර්ධ හමුදා කණ්ඩායම් (paramilitary groups) — නමුත් සියල්ලටම වඩා දේශපාලන වගකීම පැවරෙන්නේ දකුණේ පාලක පන්තියට බව මම අවධාරණය කළෙමි.

මගේ පවුල සමූල ඝාතනය කිරීමෙන් පසු, 1994 දී වලස්මුල්ල මහේස්ත්‍රාත් අධිකරණයේ මගේ පියා ගොනු කළ නඩුව යටපත් කිරීමට, ප්‍රදේශයේ එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂ (UNP) දේශපාලනඥයන්ගේ උපදෙස් මත මිද්දෙනිය පොලිසිය හැකි සෑම දෙයක්ම කළ ආකාරය විස්තර කරමින් මම නැවතත් මගේ පෞද්ගලික කතාවට පැමිණියෙමි. මගේ පියා වීරයෙකි, මම පැවසූවෙමි. ඔහුගේ අරගලයේ ප්‍රතිඵලයක් ලෙස මගේ පවුලේ සාමාජිකයන් හත්දෙනාගේ නම් මුත්තෙට්ටුවේගම ජනාධිපති පරීක්ෂණ කොමිෂන් සභා වාර්තාවට (Muttetuwegama Presidential Commission Report) ඇතුළත් විය. සෑම සමූහ මිනීවළක්ම ගොඩගත යුත්තේ මන්දැයි සහ ධනපති රාජ්‍යයට එරෙහිව විපතට පත්වූවන්ට සාධාරණය ඉටු කළ යුත්තේ මන්දැයි මම පැහැදිලි කළෙමි.

අනාගත පරම්පරාව මෙම පොදු අත්දැකීම (collective experience) ගැන දැනුවත් කිරීම සඳහා ඓතිහාසික මතකයේ (historical memory) ඇති අවශ්‍යතාවය ගැන මම කතා කළෙමි. පරම්පරාවක පොදු මතකයේ කොටසක් ලෙස පුද්ගල සාක්ෂි ආරක්ෂා කිරීමේ වැදගත්කම දෙමාපියන්ට සහ ඥාතීන්ට මම අවධාරණය කළෙමි; එවිට එහි ඉතිහාසය, එහි අරගල සහ එහි පාඩම් ඊළඟ පරම්පරාවට දායාද කළ හැකිය. මෙය හදිසි අවශ්‍යතාවයකි — මෙම මතකය දරා සිටින බොහෝ දෙමාපියන් දැනටමත් ඉතා වයෝවෘද්ධය.

1978 ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාව හඳුන්වා දී විදේශීය ප්‍රාග්ධනයට රට විවෘත කළ ධනපති පාලක පන්තිය සහ ජේ.ආර්. ජයවර්ධන ආණ්ඩුව එම යුගයේ පැවති තරුණ නැගිටීම් මර්දනය කිරීමට උත්සාහ කළ ආකාරය — සහ ජනතාව ඊට එරෙහිව නැගී සිටින සෑම අවස්ථාවකම නැවතත් රාජ්‍ය භීෂණය මුදා හැරීමට එම පාලක පන්තියම සූදානම්ව සිටින ආකාරය — මම පෙන්වා දුන්නෙමි. දැනට පවතින ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ (JVP) ආණ්ඩුව දැන් කරමින් සිටිනවා සේම, එකල ජේ.ආර්. ජයවර්ධන ආණ්ඩුව ද ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදලේ (IMF) නියෝග ක්‍රියාත්මක කරමින් සිටි බව මම සටහන් කළෙමි. සයොන්වාදී නෙතන්යාහු පාලන තන්ත්‍රය පලස්තීන ජනතාවට එරෙහිව අමානුෂික ක්‍රියා සිදු කරන ගාසා තීරයේ අපි අද සජීවීව දකින පරිදි, ජනසංහාර (genocide) සහ සමූල ඝාතන යනු අතීතයේ මර්දක ක්‍රියාවන් පමණක් නොව වර්තමානයේ ද නොනවත්වා සිදුවන යථාර්ථයක් බව මම පැවසුවෙමි. දෙමළ දුප්පත් ජනතාවට එරෙහිව ද එවැනිම අමානුෂික ක්‍රියා සිදු කරන ලද නමුත්, දකුණේ කම්කරු ජනතාව සහ දුප්පතුන් එය සිදුවන අවස්ථාවේදී දැක ගැනීමෙන් වලක්වන ලදී. කිසිදු යුද අපරාධයක් සිදුවී නොමැති බවට දකුණේ ජනතාව ඒත්තු ගැන්වීමට උත්සාහ කරමින් පාලක පන්තිය තවත් ඉදිරියට ගියේය.

මෙම ඝාතනවල සහ වර්ගවාදී යුද්ධයේ මුල් මම පැහැදිලි කළ අතර, සෑම ජාතියකම පාලක පන්තිය අප උදෙසා අටවන උගුලට — එනම් දුප්පත් සහ කම්කරු ජනතාව වාර්ගික පදනමින් බෙදීමට — අප හසු නොවිය යුත්තේ මන්දැයි පැහැදිලි කළෙමි. නැවත කිසිදිනෙක එපා, මම පැවසූවෙමි — නැවත කිසිදිනෙක සමූල ඝාතන එපා, නැවත කිසිදිනෙක වර්ගවාදී කෝලාහල එපා — සහ වාර්ගිකවාදී බලවේග නැවත නැගී සිටීමට එරෙහිව සවිඥානිකව සිටීමේ අවශ්‍යතාවය මම අවධාරණය කළෙමි. අනාගත පරම්පරාවන්ට එරෙහිව මෙවැනි අපරාධ නැවත සිදුවීමට කිසිවිටෙකත් ඉඩ නොදෙනු පිණිස, පාලක පන්තියට එරෙහිව උතුරේ සහ දකුණේ කම්කරු ජනතාව සහ දුප්පතුන් අතර එක්සත්කම ගොඩනැගීමේ අවශ්‍යතාවය අවධාරණය කරමින් මම කථාව අවසන් කළෙමි.

The North-South Bridge

The North-South Bridge: Speech delivered at International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances Event, organized by the Office on Missing Persons at Matara — 25 August 2026

By Sanjaya Jayasekera.

I delivered this speech in Sinhala to an audience of parents and relatives of the forcibly disappeared, at an event organized by the Office on Missing Persons to mark the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

I began with my personal story. I told the audience that I was speaking as one among them. Seven members of my family — including my mother's parents, her four sisters, and my own sister — were massacred by Army personnel of the Sinha Regiment-6, Katuwana Army Camp, on 27 August 1989, with the connivance of local politicians. My sister was just 6 years old and I was 8 years old.  My mother was present in the audience. I told them this was done because the perpetrators could not catch my uncle, a JVP cadre, who was later shot dead by the Beliatta police.

I recalled the state terror of that period: the tyre pyres, the headless bodies, the corpses floating down the rivers. I described how my parents tried to lodge a police complaint, and the harassment they suffered at the hands of the police. I explained how, for thirty-six years, my family was suppressed from commemorating our eight murdered relatives, and feared to grieve publicly or seek justice — a fear rooted in the continuing state terror, intimidation, and subjugation that accompanied the North-East war, through which the military's power was fortified against the working class of the country. My parents feared for the safety of their children, including myself.

I then explained to the audience how we were denied even the right to curse the army — the same military that committed these atrocities and was immediately redeployed to the North to carry out further massacres against another community. I told them that the suffering of the Tamil poor was the same as ours. I explained how the Sri Lankan ruling class did everything in its power to ideologically prepare the people of the South to support the suppression of the Tamil struggle for dignity and against discrimination. I then explained how the separatist LTTE exploited the ongoing discrimination, the university quota system, the pogroms, the burning of the Jaffna Library, and other atrocities to recruit Tamil youth — young people who were genuinely concerned for the plight of their own people, and who were prepared to wear a cyanide capsule to fight against the economic deprivation and racial discrimination that they and their people had endured for decades.

I linked this to the same economic conditions that produced youth unrest in the South, conditions which the JVP capitalized on to build a nationalist, anti-Tamil Sinhala chauvinism in defence of the unitary capitalist state. I drew on my own conversations with people affected by the North-East war during its final phase, including former LTTE cadres. I stated explicitly that the end of the war did not resolve the Tamil national question, and that the Tamil people still believe in — and still fight for — their national rights against the capitalist state, since none of their rights to dignity and against discrimination have been secured seventeen years after the war's end.

I then turned to the rights of the families of the disappeared. I emphasized their right to memory, to grieve, and to memorialize publicly — rights they already exercise privately every day, every minute — and I called on them to commemorate their disappeared relatives publicly at least once a year. I emphasized their right to know the truth about the fate of their relatives, and their right to justice against the perpetrators who are still living: their right against impunity. I named those perpetrators — the Army, the then-fascist leadership of the JVP, the then-leadership of the LTTE, the IPKF, the Karuna-Pillayan faction, and other paramilitary groups — but stressed that political responsibility rests, above all, with the ruling class of the South.

I returned again to my personal story, describing how the Middeniya police, acting on the instructions of UNP politicians in the area, did everything possible to suppress the case my father filed at the Walasmulla Magistrate's Court in 1994, following the massacre of my family. My father is a hero, I said. His struggles ensued in listing the names of the seven members of my family in the Muttetuwegama Presidential Commission Report. I explained why every mass grave must be exhumed and why justice must be delivered to the victims against the capitalist state.

I spoke of the necessity of historical memory, so that future generations are educated about this collective experience. I emphasized to the parents and relatives the vital importance of preserving individual testimony as part of the collective memory of a generation, so that its history, its struggles, and its lessons are transmitted to those who follow. This is urgent — many of these parents who carry this memory are already very old. 

I showed how the capitalist ruling class and the J.R. Jayewardene government, which introduced the 1978 Constitution and opened the country to foreign capital, sought to crush the youth unrest of that era — and how the same ruling class stands ready to unleash state terror again whenever the people rise against it. I noted that the JRJ government was implementing IMF dictates then, just as the current JVP government does now. I said that genocide and massacre are not merely measures of the past but a continuing present-day reality, as we see live in Gaza, where the Zionist Netanyahu regime is carrying out atrocities against the Palestinian people. Similar atrocities were committed against the Tamil poor, but the working people and the poor of the South were prevented from witnessing it as it happened. The ruling class went further still, seeking to convince the people of the South that no war crimes had taken place at all.

I explained the roots of these massacres and of the racist war, and why we must not fall into the trap the ruling class of every ethnicity sets for us: the division of poor and working people along ethnic lines. I said that we do not carry forward alleged animosities thousands of years old, and that no one can use ancient claims of land occupation as title to deny communities their right to the villages where they have lived for generations. Never again, I said — never again massacres, never again racist pogroms — and I stressed the need to remain vigilant against the resurgence of racialist forces. I closed by emphasizing the necessity of building unity between the working people and the poor of the North and the South against the ruling class, so that these crimes are never allowed to repeat against future generations.

Outside the Prison Walls: The Mahara Prison Riot and the Rise of Fascistic Ideology in Sri Lanka

 Outside the Prison Walls: The Mahara Prison Riot and the Rise of Fascistic Ideology in Sri Lanka

By Sanjaya Jayasekera.

On August 1-2, 2026, a riot erupted at Mahara Prison, north of Colombo, causing severe damage to its already unlivable infrastructure and reportedly resulting in the death of one inmate. This is the second prison riot in less than a month and followed the massacre in the Negombo prison early last month.[1] The vast majority of detainees at Mahara — as throughout Sri Lanka’s prison system, where approximately 75 percent of inmates are unconvicted remand prisoners — are held in indefinite judicial limbo, warehoused in facilities built for 11,762 that now hold more than 42,000. The conditions are, by any objective standard, a form of systematic torture: prisoners forced to sleep standing, defecate into shopping bags, survive on food that “even cats and dogs” would reject, confined to as little as 1.2 square metres of space.[2] In 2023, 67.8 percent (31,822)  of those imprisoned were jailed due to their inability to pay fines — a form of criminalization of poverty. A recent National Audit Office report finds that over 15,000 remain in prolonged remand custody due to delay in government analyst reports. The riot was not an act of criminality. It was an explosion of outrage of human beings subjected to torturous conditions that the capitalist state has deliberately created and deliberately maintains.  

Relatives of the inmates demand not to shoot the prisoners, outside Mahara Prison on 1 August 2026. Photo credit: Ishara S. Kodikara

But it is not the riot itself that most starkly reveals the political trajectory of Sri Lankan society. It is the response — both of the state and of a significant and vocal section of the public.

In the hours following the Mahara unrest, as was in the aftermath of the Negombo prison incident, a significant segment of society — concentrated in the Sinhala middle class of the south and amplified across social media — began openly proposing measures that belong to the lexicon of fascism. “Break their limbs.” “Shoot them in the head.” “Exterminate the drug residue.” These are not the mutterings of isolated cranks. They are the publicly expressed, socially sanctioned political proposals of a layer of the population that has been systematically prepared over decades to regard certain categories of human beings as unworthy of life. The comments sections of mainstream news outlets and the feeds of social media platforms have become open forums for the advocacy of extrajudicial murder, for the vilification of grieving families, for the glorification of the STF and the military, deployed by the JVP/NPP government, to crush prison riots. The corporate media has done nothing to challenge this — because it cannot, because the media itself has been a primary vehicle for the ideological preparation that has produced it.

Military deployed at the Mahara prison on 1 August 2026. Photo credit: Ishara S Kodikara

Following the Mahara unrest, in a video of an elderly mother of a remand prisoner, published on Dasatha News facebook page, she demanded the release of the names of inmates affected by the riot and subsequent military crackdown — including those killed, transferred to other prisons, or hospitalized. In the video, she holds the ruling class and the police accountable for creating a society dominated by drug lords who prey on the sons of impoverished mothers. She explains that her son was framed through drug planting — a widespread practice by the Sri Lanka Police, a routine mechanism for criminalizing poverty and filling the remand prisons with the sons and daughters of the poor.

  The video attracted hundreds of scathing, inhumane, and morally bankrupt comments. Commentators vilified her for giving birth to her son, blamed her entirely for his drug addiction, and condemned her for failing to raise him properly. The same hostile barrage was directed at parents, siblings, and other relatives who gathered outside the Mahara and Negombo prisons during the riots and crackdowns to demand the safety of their loved ones — mothers weeping at the gates while gunfire echoed within, wives and children pleading for information, families who had traveled from distant villages only to be met with the deployment of armed drones, armored vehicles, and the Special Task Force.

This is the face of the fascistic ideology now brewing in sections of the Sri Lankan middle class. It is not merely a political tendency expressed in abstract slogans about “law and order.” It is a social practice of systematic cruelty directed at the most vulnerable — at an elderly mother pleading for her son, at families demanding to know whether their loved ones are alive or dead. The same social media users who demand that prisoners be shot in the head are the ones who mock a mother’s grief, who blame her for the poverty into which her son was born, who insist that the state’s lethal violence is not merely justified but righteous.

This reaction reflects a profound moral decay. It is the ideological harvest of a society that has been taught, systematically and over generations, that lethal violence against the “enemy within” is not merely justified but heroic — and that those who love the enemy, who plead for the enemy, who gave birth to the enemy, are themselves contemptible. The elderly mother who demands to know whether her son is alive is not a grieving parent to be treated with compassion. She is an obstacle to the state’s campaign of terror, and the social media mob has been trained to treat her accordingly.

No public figure has yet gone on record in a formal media statement advocating the extrajudicial execution of prisoners. This tendency has not yet crystallized into an organized movement with a large social base. But it does not need to. The historical lesson of fascism — as demonstrated by the international resurgence of the far right — is that fascist movements are not mass movements from their inception. They begin as ideological currents within sections of the petty bourgeoisie, nurtured by the state and the media, that are activated and expanded when the ruling class requires a battering ram against the working class. The social media comments calling for prisoners to be shot, the mockery of a mother’s anguish, the vilification of families at the prison gates — these are the early ideological indicators of a tendency that the JVP/NPP government, facing mounting social opposition to IMF austerity, will seek to cultivate and mobilize.

The Genealogy of a Fascistic Ideology

The calls to shoot prisoners in the head did not emerge from nowhere. They are the latest expression of an ideological trajectory that can be traced with precision.

The 26-year communal war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), concluded in 2009 with the slaughter of an estimated 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months alone, was not merely a military campaign. It was a project of ideological mobilization on a mass scale. The state, Sinhala-Buddhist saffron forces, and the media jointly constructed a narrative in which the Tamil population — and by extension any population that could be designated as an internal threat — was dehumanized. The war was presented not as a conflict between the Sinhala and Tamil ruling classes, each seeking to exploit “their” workers, but as a civilizational struggle for the “Sinhala motherland” against a barbaric enemy. The Sri Lankan military mercilessly pounded the no-fire zone with artillery shells, deliberately targeting hospitals, aid centres and designated civilian areas. Grisly video evidence later emerged of Sri Lankan soldiers executing naked, bound and blindfolded men in cold blood. [3] When the LTTE defences collapsed, the military murdered surrendering LTTE leaders and herded some 300,000 civilians into army-controlled detention camps.

The Sri Lankan military was glorified as the savior of the nation. War heroes were celebrated in state ceremonies, their images plastered across billboards, their “sacrifices” invoked in political speeches. The military budget was expanded, not contracted, after the war ended. Military “leadership training” was imposed on university students. [4] The armed forces were integrated into the civil administration, including in schools, with retired and serving generals appointed to key government positions. The glorification of the military was inseparable from the cultivation of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, which presented the Sinhala majority as the authentic nation and all others as threats to its integrity.

This ideological campaign did not end with the war. It was repurposed. As the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) warned in 2021: “The military and its brutal methods developed during the war are now being prepared for use against the working class, as unrest grows over the worsening social conditions facing working people.” [5] The “war on terror” became the “war on drugs,” which became the “war on the underworld.” The enemy was no longer the Tamil separatist but the drug dealer, the criminal, the “underworld figure” — categories that, in practice, encompass the poorest and most marginalized layers of the working class.

The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) explained the logic of these campaigns as early as 2009: the “war on the underworld” was launched “to divert growing popular discontent and to justify the further strengthening of the state apparatus in preparation for social unrest.”[6] The same analysis applies with equal force today. The JVP/NPP government’s escalating “war on drugs” is a rehearsal for police-state measures, the main target of which is the working class that come into struggle.

The middle-class social media users who now call for prisoners to be shot in the head are the products of this decades-long ideological conditioning. They have been taught to see the state’s lethal violence as legitimate, to regard due process as an obstacle to “security,” and to view certain categories of the poor as subhuman. 

The Same Tendency, the Same Targets

But this tendency is not new. It is the same social layer, animated by the same ideology, that has for the past few years populated the comments sections of mainstream media with the glorification of the military and the dehumanization of its victims. When the daily excavations of skeletal remains at the Chemmani-Siththupaththi mass grave are reported — the bones of Tamil men, women, and children who were “disappeared” by state forces, buried in unusual positions, and dumped together in shallow pits — this same social media mob posts comments calling to “make soup out of their bones and have it.” When Tamil communities in the North and East protest the military’s continued occupation of their lands — a permanent network of army camps established during the war and never dismantled — this same tendency demands the deployment of the army to crush them. When Tamil families who have spent decades searching for their loved ones demand accountability for the tens of thousands slaughtered in the final months of the war, this same social layer mocks their grief and insists the killings were justified. When the skeletal remains of 136 individuals were unearthed in Mannar after 74 days of excavation, the same voices jeered, defending the military.

The calls to shoot prisoners in the head are not a departure from this chauvinist culture. They are its extension. The ideological machinery that was built to dehumanize the Tamil “terrorist” has been repurposed to dehumanize the Sinhala “criminal.” The mechanism is identical: construct a subhuman category, mobilize revulsion against it, and demand that the state kill without process, without mercy, without accountability. The war against the LTTE provided the template. The “war on drugs” provides the new target. The underlying logic — that certain categories of human beings may be killed by the state with impunity, without trial, without process, without mercy and that those who call for their killing are patriots — is the same.

The decades-long campaign of militarization and Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism has prepared this social layer to serve as the shock troops of reaction. The glorification of war heroes, the celebration of military “victory,” the refusal to acknowledge war crimes, the mockery of mass graves — all of this has cultivated an ideological disposition that regards lethal state violence not as a crime to be prosecuted but as a virtue to be celebrated. The middle-class youth who posts “shoot them in the head” on Facebook is not expressing an idiosyncratic opinion. He is expressing the logical endpoint of an ideology that has been systematically inculcated through the education system, the media, and the political culture of the post-war period. He is the product of a society that has never held its killers to account and has instead elevated them to the status of national heroes.

The same social layer revealed its moral character with unmistakable clarity during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which since October 2023 has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians — men, women, and children slaughtered under the banner of “fighting terrorism.” Across social media, this section of the Sinhala middle class expressed vociferous indifference to the genocide and open support for Zionist Israel’s crimes. The same dehumanization mechanism was at work: Palestinians were “terrorists,” their deaths were “necessary,” their suffering was deserved. That the JVP/NPP government itself has conspicuously failed to condemn Israel’s planned seizure of Gaza, pointedly omitting any mention of genocide or ethnic cleansing from its official statements, is no coincidence. The ideological framework that justifies the slaughter of prisoners at Mahara or Negombo, the mockery of Chemmani’s dead, and the indifference to Gaza’s murdered children is one and the same: the conviction that lethal state violence against a dehumanized enemy is not a crime but a form of justice. This is the moral universe that decades of militarization and chauvinism have built.

The social base that the JVP/NPP government is cultivating is this. The party that opposed UN human rights investigations into war crimes, that integrated retired military officers into its political apparatus, that retains the Prevention of Terrorism Act and expands police-state powers — this party governs with the tacit support of the social media mob that demands bullets for prisoners and mocks the bones of the disappeared. It does not need to issue formal statements endorsing such sentiments. It needs only to continue what it is already doing: glorifying the security forces, refusing accountability for past and present massacres, and framing its “war on drugs” as a civilizational struggle against subhuman enemies. The social media tendency will do the rest, providing the popular ideological cover that the state requires to escalate its violence — against prisoners today, against striking workers and protesting youth tomorrow.

The JVP/NPP: Architects of Militarization

The present leaders of this militarization campaign are the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the National People’s Power (NPP) government. This is a fact of immense political significance that must be stated without equivocation.

The JVP campaigned for the 2024 elections on a platform of “systemic change.” It made promises to workers, peasants, and youth across every corner of society. It presented its program as a vision of social righteousness, of clean government, of a break with the corrupt and violent past. It rode to power on the back of the massive Aragalaya uprising of 2022, in which about a million working people rose up against the Rajapaksa regime and the unbearable social conditions produced by the crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism and the 2022 sovereign default.

Today, that same JVP/NPP holds power while actively driving militarization forward. It has retained the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which it explicitly promised to abolish. It has invoked essential services laws to criminalize strikes across key sectors. It has introduced the Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA), vastly expanding state repressive powers. It has announced a plan to recruit 10,000 retired military personnel into the police force — many of whom have combat experience from the 26-year anti-Tamil communal war. It has established over 14,000 Public Safety Committees across all village officer divisions, institutionalized as a force operating under the police — a revival of the intelligence-gathering committees set up by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa during the war, with JVP members reportedly appointed to them in almost all areas.[7]

The JVP’s collaboration with the military apparatus is not new. During the war, the Sinhala chauvinist JVP was a virulent advocate of the military campaign against the LTTE, demanding an all-out military solution and vehemently opposing any concessions to Tamils. [8] [9] [10] In 2010, it formed a sordid electoral alliance with former army commander Sarath Fonseka, the general who oversaw the final military offensives. In 2023, as it prepared for government, the JVP/NPP established formal collectives of retired military and police officers — the Retired Tri-forces Collective and the Retired Police Officers Collective — integrating figures most likely including individuals connected to crimes and human rights abuses during the war into its political apparatus.

The betrayal of the Tamil population of the North and East is among the most damning indictments of the JVP/NPP government. During the 2024 presidential and parliamentary election campaigns, Dissanayake and the JVP/NPP made explicit promises to Tamil voters: the release of all political prisoners, the return of civilian land seized by the military, and the provision of information to families of the tens of thousands of missing persons. On the basis of these pledges — and driven by deep disaffection with the traditional Tamil bourgeois parties that had betrayed them for decades — a significant section of Tamil voters swung behind the JVP/NPP in the November 2024 parliamentary election, handing the party a plurality of votes in all but one district in the North and East. Every one of these promises has been broken. The government now claims that political prisoners were convicted on criminal charges and therefore cannot be released. Some land has been returned, but an estimated 2,600 acres still remain under military control, and tens of thousands of acres seized from ordinary working people during the war remain in the hands of the armed forces. Instead of revealing the fate of the disappeared, the government proposes limited financial reparations to victims’ families while protecting the perpetrators. The JVP/NPP has categorically rejected United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions calling for investigations into war crimes. Its opposition to any human rights investigation flows from its Sinhala chauvinist politics and ardent support for the protracted anti-Tamil civil war and is insisting on the lie that the military committed no war crimes. The Tamil masses who voted based on promises of “systemic change”— in spite of the long record of JVP’s anti-Tamil chauvinism — have instead received the same military occupation, the same denial of justice, the same criminalization of their dead.

Now, the JVP Justice Minister visits the Sittupattu mass grave site (on 19 June), faces hundreds of protesters demanding truth and accountability, and walks past them to promise justice “within two years.” But the obscenity does not end there. After standing at Sri Lanka’s largest mass grave — over 400 skeletal remains, including the bones of infants — the minister, answering questions from people at a meeting held at the Jaffna Divisional Secretariat Office publicly cast doubt on whether Chemmani is even a mass grave at all, suggesting it may simply be a normal graveyard. He stated, “first of all, it is a cemetery, cause of death of bones should be inspected, and complaints are required before we can proceed with DNA identification”. In another press statement, the Minister raised doubts as to who the perpetrators were, attempting to discredit strong allegations against the armed forces.[11] This is not confusion. This is not ignorance. This is the language of cover-up. It is the language of impunity spoken aloud.

This is the party that now governs Sri Lanka. This is the party that presides over the prison massacres at Negombo and Mahara. This is the party whose media allies portray dead prison guards as “heroes” who “sacrificed their lives” — the right-wing Island newspaper declaring: “The drug mafia has flexed its muscle again. The government has embarked on an ambitious campaign to rid the country of narcotics, and rightly so.” [12] On August 3, its Sinhala language daily, Divina named the military-STF intervention in the Mahara prison as a “humanitarian mission”, which echoed the term used to refer to the military onslaught in the final phase of the civil war. This is the  party that is precisely accountable for the massive inhumanity, savagery, and moral decay represented by the calls to shoot prisoners in the head.

The Middle Class and the Fascist Mobilization,

The social media posts proposing the extrajudicial execution of prisoners are not evenly distributed across the population. They emanate disproportionately from the Sinhala middle class of the south — the petty bourgeoisie, the lower-level professionals, the small business owners, the university-educated and unemployed youth who have been traditionally taught to see themselves as the guardians of the nation’s moral order. This is the classic social base of fascist movements, and its emergence in Sri Lanka follows a pattern that Marxism has long understood.

The middle class occupies a contradictory position in capitalist society. It is not part of the bourgeoisie — it does not own the means of production on a scale that frees it from the necessity of work. But it is terrified of falling into the proletariat, of losing its precarious status, of being swallowed by the poverty that surrounds it. In periods of capitalist crisis, when its economic position is threatened by inflation, unemployment, and the collapse of small enterprises, the middle class becomes politically volatile. It can be mobilized either in alliance with the working class against the bourgeoisie — or, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, as the shock troops of reaction against the working class.[13] 

The decades-long campaign of militarization and Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism has prepared the Sri Lankan middle class to choose the latter path. The glorification of war heroes, the demonization of internal enemies, the constant invocation of “national security” — all of this has cultivated an ideological disposition that sees violence as the solution to social problems. What is developing among sections of the disgruntled Sinhala middle class is not a diffuse or generalized social conservatism. It is a far-right political current, bearing all the essential characteristics of fascism as the Marxist tradition has understood it: the glorification of lethal state violence as a social good, the systematic dehumanization of designated internal enemies, the contempt for due process and legal norms, and the conviction that extrajudicial killing is a legitimate instrument of “law and order.” 

This tendency may not yet have a large social base. It is concentrated among a significant section of social media users — particularly youth and the middle class — who wage this militaristic, demoralized, inhumane campaign as a matter of defending law and order and security. The JVP/NPP government is its political beneficiary and its tacit patron — because it understands that when working-class resistance intensifies, this far-right current will be available for mobilization as the street-level enforcers of state terror.

The government and the ruling class are aware of these developments and are tacitly encouraging them. This is the decisive political point. The social media mob that calls for bullets in prisoners’ heads is not acting against the state. It is acting in harmony with a state that has itself just carried out a shoot-to-kill operation at Negombo, that has deployed the STF and the military against unarmed prisoners, that has subjected transferred inmates to retaliatory torture resulting in at least two post-transfer deaths.[1] The state kills; the social media mob applauds; the government appoints a committee of retired judges to bury the truth. Each element reinforces the others.

SLPP as the direct institutional patron of the far-right 

This far-right current is not an amorphous social mood. It is being politically organized. Its most direct institutional patrons are the Rajapaksa family’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), which has installed Namal Rajapaksa — the son of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa — as its national organizer, and the Buddhist clergy that vociferously backs him. 

The SLPP and its clerical allies portray the JVP/NPP government as betraying the Sinhala nation by granting concessions to Tamils in order to secure the support of the Tamil diaspora. This is a calculated distortion, but it contains a kernel of political reality. The JVP/NPP was indeed fully supported by sections of the Tamil diaspora — Tamil capitalist expatriates, the wealthy, and the elite — and continues to seek their backing. These layers in turn expect the government to deliver the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution, including the devolution of police and land powers, as the price of their political loyalty. The JVP/NPP, however, has no intention of fulfilling these expectations. It has released only an insignificant extent of occupied lands, while military occupation of the North and East continues unabated. 

The SLPP exploits this contradiction to posture as the savior of Buddhism and the Sinhala nation, directly encouraging far-right fascistic elements who wage Sinhala-Buddhist racist provocations in the North — such as the illegal expansion of the Tissa Viharaya temple on seized Tamil land, the erection of Buddha statues as deliberate communal provocations in Trincomalee, and the ongoing campaign by Buddhist chauvinist groups to assert Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy over Tamil and Muslim communities. The SLPP’s aim is transparent: to outflank the JVP/NPP from the right, to mobilize the most backward and violent sections of the Sinhala middle class, and to position itself as the political leadership of the fascistic tendency now brewing in Sri Lankan society. 

The JVP/NPP, for its part, has repeatedly demonstrated that it will not confront this reactionary mobilization but will accommodate and appease it — because it shares its fundamental ideological premises and will require its services when working-class resistance intensifies. The middle-class social media mob that demands bullets for prisoners and mocks the Chemmani dead is not an isolated phenomenon. It is the raw material of a political movement that already has its leaders, its institutions, and its patrons — and that is being prepared for deployment against the working class.

The Trajectory: From Prisoners to Workers

The critical political question is: where does this trajectory lead?

The government will in due course direct these fascistic tendencies against working-class struggles. The middle class that today demands bullets for prisoners will tomorrow demand bullets for strikers. The social media mob that dehumanizes “drug residue” will be mobilized to dehumanize workers who defy essential services orders, youth who protest IMF austerity, peasants who resist land grabs. The ideological machinery that was built to prosecute the war against the LTTE and then repurposed for the “war on drugs” will be repurposed again for the war on the working class.

As the Socialist Lead of Sri Lanka and South Asia (SLLA) warned in November 2024, The JVP/NPP government is already preparing the ground. [14] The 14,000 Public Safety Committees, staffed with JVP members and operating under police supervision, are mechanisms for surveillance, intelligence gathering, and repression against political opponents and workers engaged in struggle. The recruitment of 10,000 retired military personnel into the police force is a direct preparation for the violent suppression of social unrest. The government expects strong resistance from youth and students and has already deployed the police to violently suppress teachers’ protests and student demonstrations. School Development Officers were beaten and detained by police in December 2024 for demanding their rights. Allied health science graduates were violently suppressed and arrested in March and April 2025.

The JVP/NPP is implementing the IMF austerity program to the letter. Dissanayake retains the main portfolios of finance and defence to ensure the government’s foremost task of ruthlessly implementing IMF austerity measures is directly in his hands. For 2026, the allocation of funds to the Ministry of Defence is 530 billion Rupees. On the very first day the majority-JVP/NPP parliament convened, the government jettisoned its election pledge to renegotiate the IMF bailout. The measures include significant tax increases targeting workers, the lowering of the income-tax threshold directly affecting the middle class, the slashing of vital public services and a fire-sale of state-owned enterprises, destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs. Parliament unanimously approved these IMF austerity measures in December 2024. Dissanayake’s budgets were fully dictated by the IMF. The working class and the poor suffer heavily due to sky-rocketing prices of consumer items, including essential food items, while the JVP-controlled majority trade unions have artificially suppressed the working class struggles. 

The government knows it sits on a social powder-keg. The austerity measures it implements will generate mass opposition. It is haunted by the 2022 Aragalaya. Its response is to build the repressive apparatus in advance, to cultivate the ideological climate in which lethal violence against protesters will be accepted, and to prepare the middle-class shock troops who will condemn and vilify the worker, hail the military-police crack-down and provide the political cover for state terror.

The JVP’s general secretary Tilvin Silva has declared that “there will be no other governments after this government.” President Dissanayake has said the government “cannot be shaken for decades.” These are not expressions of democratic confidence. They are threats. They announce that the JVP/NPP will not peacefully surrender power, that it is preparing to rule through force, that the fascistic ideology now being cultivated in the middle class is an essential component of its political strategy.

The Crisis of Sri Lankan Capitalism

The prison system — and the fascistic ideology that demands its victims be shot — is a concentrated expression of the broader social catastrophe produced by Sri Lankan capitalism. According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the country was among the most unequal in the Asia-Pacific region by 2023. The Super-Rich comprise just 1 percent of the population but command a massive 31 percent of the total personal wealth in the country. The Working Class and the Poor comprise  half of the entire population but collectively own less than 4 percent of the overall national wealth. 

The plantation workers of the central hill country — the descendants of indentured laborers brought from India by British colonialism — continue to live in conditions of abject poverty. The urban poor of Colombo’s slums, the rural farmers crushed by debt and the removal of fertilizer subsidies, the youth who face permanent unemployment — these are the social layers from which the prison population is drawn.

They are the human products of a system that subordinates human need to private profit. And when they resist — when they protest, when they strike, when they explode — the state answers with bullets. When the middle class applauds those bullets, it is not expressing a pathology. It is expressing the logic of a system that requires the dehumanization of its victims in order to sustain itself.

The Warning and the Task

Workers must recognize this danger. The calls to shoot prisoners in the head are not a temporary aberration. They are a political warning. The same forces that today demand the extrajudicial execution of remand prisoners will tomorrow demand the same for striking workers, for protesting students, for anyone who threatens the “stability” that the ruling class requires to continue its exploitation. The social media tendency that mocks the bones of the Chemmani dead, vilifies a remand prisoner’s grieving mother, and calls for bullets in the heads of prisoners is being cultivated as the ideological battering ram of a government preparing for class war.

The revolutionary party must be conscious of these subtle developments in the social consciousness and expose the growing dangers. This means neither exaggerating the tendency into something it is not yet — a mass fascist movement — nor dismissing it as the harmless venting of online cranks. It means identifying it precisely for what it is: an emergent ideological current, rooted in the material crisis of the middle class, cultivated by decades of militarization and Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, and tacitly encouraged by a government that will require it when working-class resistance to austerity intensifies. It means exposing the continuity between the dehumanization of Tamils, the mockery of mass graves, and the demand for bullets in prisoners’ heads — because all three are expressions of the same logic, nurtured by the same state, and aimed at the same ultimate target: the working class.

The working class must defeat the ruling class’s militarization program and ideology. This requires an independent political mobilization, organized through action committees in every workplace and neighborhood, that breaks decisively with all capitalist parties — including the JVP/NPP — and their trade union appendages. It requires the building of a revolutionary party, armed with the program of socialist internationalism, that fights for the unity of Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim workers across ethnic divisions and builds an alliance of the working class with all oppressed layers, the peasantry and the youth against the ruling class that foments divisions among them to strengthen capitalist class rule.

The fight against fascistic ideology cannot be separated from the fight against the capitalist system that produces it. The middle class that calls for prisoners to be shot is itself a product of a society in crisis — economically threatened, ideologically disoriented, politically manipulated by a ruling class that requires it as a battering ram against the working class. The only force capable of defeating this reactionary mobilization is the organized working class, united across all communal lines, advancing its own socialist program as the alternative to the barbarism of capitalism in decay.

The Negombo dead, the Mahara brutalized prisoners, the tens of thousands slaughtered at Mulliwaikkal, the tens of thousands of rural youth killed in 1988–89, the skeletons still being unearthed at Chemmani and Mannar, the forcibly disappeared, the tortured and the warehoused — The blood of the Sri Lankan working class and oppressed cries out against a system that produces only death and misery. The task of the SLLA is to build the revolutionary party to organize the working class, in alliance with the middle class, the petty-bourgeoisie, the rural poor and the urban impoverished, to put an end to it — through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a workers’ state, in Sri Lanka, South Asia and internationally, as part of the world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International.

[1] The Negombo Prison Massacre: Class Violence and the Capitalist State in Sri Lanka, The Socialist Lead of Sri Lanka and South Asia (SLLA) (11 July 2026).<https://www.thesocialist.lk/11-07-2026-the-negombo-prison-massacre-class-violence-and-the-capitalist-state-in-sri-lanka/>

[2] Inmates face torture after prison riots in Sri Lanka, Wasantha Rupasinghe (10 July 2026) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/11/uohf-j11.html> 

[3] Video evidence of Sri Lankan government war crimes, Sarath Kumara (29 August 2009) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/08/slkl-a29.html> 

[4] Sri Lanka: Military discipline for university students, Panini Wijesiriwardena (24 January 2011) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/01/sril-j24.html> 

[5] Twelve years since the end of Sri Lanka’s communal war, Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) (26 May 2021) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/27/slwr-m27.html> 

[6] Sri Lankan government launches “war on the underworld” Sarath Kumara (3 August 2009) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/08/slcr-a03.html> 

[7] Sri Lankan government to expand repressive police apparatus, N. Ranges (19 June 2025) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/06/20/ioqy-j20.html> 

[8] An abrupt turn in Sri Lanka’s civil war once again reveals the fascist character of the JVP, Nanda Wickremasinghe (8 September 2000) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/09/jvp-s08.html> 

[9] Sri Lanka: JVP vehemently opposes any concessions to Tamils, Wije Dias (11 June 2009) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/06/sril-j11.html> 

[10] Sri Lankan government negotiates with JVP ally on program for all-out war, K. Ratnayake (28 August 2006) <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/08/sril-a28.html> 

[11] “We are currently exhuming bodies in Chemmani. First, we need to determine whether those deaths occurred naturally or due to trauma. The other issue is that within a very short period in that area, the LTTE was in control, the Indian Army was there, and other paramilitaries from that time were also there. The army came much later. Therefore, an investigation is underway to identify the relevant individuals. We will conduct it properly.” Adaderana Facebook on 29 July 2026. [“චෙම්මනි මිනී ගොඩගනිමින් අපි ඉන්නෙ. ඒව සමහරවිට ස්වභාවිකව වෙළා ද, එහෙම නැත්නම් ට්‍රොමා එකකින් උනාද කියල ඉස්සෙල්ල බේරගන්නට ඕන. අනික් ගැටලුව ඔය ප්‍රදේශයේ ඉතා කෙටි කාලයක් තුළ LTTE එකත් පාලනයේ ඉඳළ තියෙනව, ඉන්දියන් හමුදාවත් ඉඳළ තියෙනව, ඒකාලෙ හිටපු අනිත් පැරාමිලිටරිස් ඉඳළ තියෙනව. හමුදාව එන්නෙ ඊට ගොඩාක් පස්සෙ. ඒ නිසා අදාළ පුද්ගලයො හොයාගැනීමට විමර්ශන කටයුත්තක් තිබෙනව. ඒක අපි හරියට කරනව.”]

[12] Inmates face torture after prison riots in Sri Lanka, Wasantha Rupasinghe (10 July 2026)<https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/11/uohf-j11.html> 

[13] Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie and Proletariat: Jacobinism, Social Democracy and Fascism – The Political Programs of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Leon Trotsky, (August 1932) <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/08/onlyroad2.htm >

[14] Sri Lanka’s ruling NPP secures a strong parliamentary majority to enforce IMF dictates: Build the SEP to fight the cuts! Statement of the Socialist Lead of Sri Lanka and South Asia (SLLA), the Revolutionary Left Faction (RLF) of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) of Sri Lanka (16 November 2026) <https://www.thesocialist.lk/sri-lankas-ruling-npp-secures-a-strong-parliamentary-majority-to-enforce-imf-dictates-build-the-sep-to-fight-the-cuts/>