WSWS, “A fresh lesson: The end of the Detroit newspaper strike and the crisis of the labor movement”: “The bureaucracy itself is a privileged, upper-middle class social layer. Because it is tied to the capitalist system, it seeks to conceal from the working class the real nature of this system and the position of workers within it.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/01/iwb-j04.html↩︎
We publish here Part 1 of a series examining the global wave of Gen Z protests, the deepening crisis of revolutionary leadership, and the necessity of fighting for the program of socialist internationalism on the basis of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.
“Gen Z” Madagascar supporters wave the skull and crossbones flag during a gathering at May 13 Square in Antananarivo, Madagascar, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025. [AP Photo/Brian Inganga]
From the streets of Dhaka to Nairobi, from Colombo to Kathmandu, from Manila to every corner of the former colonial world—from Morocco to Peru, from Madagascar onward—a wave of youth-led uprisings has shaken the global capitalist order between 2022 and 2025. These movements have captured global attention with their scale, militancy, and apparent spontaneity. In September 2024, in Bangladesh, millions, predominantly angry youth, marched demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina1. In Kenya, the largest and most sustained protest movement since its Independence from colonial Britain took place from June 20242 to last month, where Generation Z (Gen-Z) protesters stormed parliament and brought President William Ruto’s government to the brink of collapse over his proposed austerity law. Sri Lanka’s youth occupation of Galle Face Green in July 2022 forced President Gotabaya Rajapakse to flee the country. Nepal saw its government toppled amid deadly street battles last September. Last month, the Philippines witnessed its largest demonstrations in two decades, while, on October 14, Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina was toppled following a mass popular mobilization and subsequent military intervention. These movements unfolded alongside hundreds of mass demonstrations—mobilizing millions across Europe and around the globe—against Zionist Israel’s genocide in Gaza, against the Trump administration’s preparations for a presidential dictatorship in the United States, and against the growing belligerency of imperialism around the world.
In Bangladesh, the military installed Muhammad Yunus, a banker with close ties to Western imperialism, who immediately announced “robust and far-reaching economic reforms”—a transparent code for savage International Monetary Fund austerity. In Kenya, late opposition leader Raila Odinga, who had postured as champion of the masses, joined hands with Ruto’s government to implement the identical policies the protests opposed, while the country was designated a US “major non-NATO ally”. Sri Lanka’s uprising delivered power to Ranil Wickremesinghe, a pro-IMF stooge who ruthlessly enforced austerity using police-state repression. Nepal’s protests were exploited by the military to install a technocratic interim government headed by former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, sidelining all political parties while maintaining capitalist rule.
For the millions of youth who risked their lives in these struggles, the outcomes represent devastating betrayals. The fundamental questions facing the working class and the oppressed masses remain unresolved: How can youth secure jobs, education, and a decent future? How can democratic rights be defended against increasingly authoritarian regimes? How can the stranglehold of imperialist finance capital be broken? Most urgently, as the United States and NATO prepare for catastrophic wars against Russia and China, how can the working class and youth prevent themselves from becoming cannon fodder in conflicts that serve only the interests of rival capitalist powers?
The answer lies not in the “leaderless”— so, fundamentally pro-imperialist and pro-capitalist— mythology promoted by pseudo-left organizations, nor in the anti-corruption frameworks that channel mass anger into support for one bourgeois faction against another. It requires understanding why these movements, despite their revolutionary potential, have been systematically hijacked by forces defending capitalism. It demands a return to the theoretical foundations established by Leon Trotsky in his Theory of Permanent Revolution and defended by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) against decades of Stalinist, Maoist, and Pabloite revisionism. Above all, it necessitates the independent political mobilization of the working class under revolutionary leadership—the building of sections of the ICFI in every country to wage the struggle for world socialist revolution.
Global Gen-Z uprisings and their betrayed outcomes
The Gen-Z protest movements of 2022-2025 follow a remarkably consistent pattern across continents, revealing not isolated national phenomena but expressions of a single global crisis of capitalism.
Sri Lanka 2022 provided the template. Between April and July, hundreds of thousands took to the streets as skyrocketing prices, fuel shortages, power-cuts, fertilizer cuts and crop destruction, and medicine scarcity made life unbearable. The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic disruption from the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine had devastated global supply chains. Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves collapsed, forcing the government to default on its debt and halt vital imports. Mass protests erupted with demands that President Rajapakse resign—”Gota Go Home”—and that all 225 parliamentarians be removed, in which millions drawn from rural and urban poor participated across ethnic lines (except for the fact that the struggles could not gather support largely from the youth of Jaffna in the North of the country and from the up-country estate workers primarily because they saw no regime change in the South would solve any of their fundamental problems, and not necessarily due to the stronghold of discredited bourgeois Tamil nationalists and the trade union bureaucracy operating within those communities). Trade unions were compelled to call two limited one-day general strikes on April 28 and May 6, demonstrating the immense power of the working class when it intervenes. Rajapakse was forced to flee the country on July 13, 2022.
But the political leadership of the movement remained in the hands of trade union bureaucrats, the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), youth proxies of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and middle-class groups at Galle Face Green, all of which subordinated the working class to demands for a transitional “interim government” that would preserve capitalist rule. Parliament was thus able to install Wickremesinghe, who imposed the IMF’s austerity program with an iron fist, using draconian legislation including the Essential Public Service Act to suppress worker opposition. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) warned at the time: “The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves,” and that “there is no solution to the immense social problems and an end to the suppression of democratic rights within the existing social order.” However, the SEP’s forces remained limited, and it was not yet in a position to provide the mass revolutionary leadership necessary to mobilize a general strike and transform the popular uprising into a struggle for workers’ power. The decades-long betrayals of Stalinism, Maoism and nationalist trade union bureaucracies, and Pabloism within the Fourth International, had systematically undermined working-class consciousness, which in turn pressured the party into alienation, and prevented the emergence of a mass Trotskyist party capable of leading the working class, youth, and oppressed layers of the middle class in a united revolutionary offensive.
Bangladesh 2024 witnessed a similar trajectory compressed into explosive weeks. In July, university students organized under Students Against Discrimination began protesting a regressive job quota system. When Hasina’s government responded with murderous violence—unleashing police, military units, and Awami League thugs who killed scores of students—the protests escalated dramatically. By early August, millions were marching to Dhaka, expressing not merely anger over the quota system but accumulated rage over grinding poverty, massive inequality, and ruthless exploitation in the garment industry that produces billions in exports. The military, unable to contain the uprising, forced Hasina to resign and flee to India on August 5.
The military immediately installed an interim administration headed by Yunus, whose “close connections with US and European imperialist powers” were emphasized even in mainstream coverage. The Bangladesh National Party and Stalinist parties grouped in the Left Democratic Alliance pledged their full support. Throughout this upheaval, the trade unions and pseudo-left forces, including the Workers Party of Bangladesh, worked systematically to prevent the working class from intervening as an independent force with its own program3. The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) correctly analyzed: “Workers and their families joined the student-initiated protests. However, they did so as individuals, not as a class, using strikes and other weapons of class struggle and advancing their own demands.”
Kenya’s Gen-Z insurgency in June-August 2024 represented perhaps the most politically advanced of these movements. Youth unemployment reaching 67 percent, combined with IMF-dictated tax increases in the Finance Bill 2024, ignited mass protests demanding President William Ruto’s resignation. The movement transcended the tribal divisions that the Kenyan ruling class has stoked for decades to weaken the working class4. On “Bloody Tuesday,” June 25, police opened fire on demonstrators, killing dozens as they stormed parliament. Over 60 would die in the uprising, with scores abducted by security forces.
Protesters scatter as Kenya police spray water cannon at them during a protest over proposed tax hikes in a finance bill in downtown Nairobi, Kenya, June. 25, 2024. [AP Photo/Brian Inganga]
Ruto tactically withdrew the Finance Bill, but this concession only exposed the underlying conspiracy among the ruling class. In August, Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM)—which had postured as opposition—joined Ruto’s government5. The Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), led by Francis Atwoli, and influential Christian and Muslim clergy backed this coalition government. Austerity policies continue, the military has been deployed against civilian protesters for the first time in Kenyan history, and the country was designated a US “major non-NATO ally” by the Biden administration, positioning it as a proxy force in Washington’s preparations for war with China.
The subsequent strike wave by teachers, transport workers, healthcare staff, and civil servants demonstrated the potential for working-class power. Yet COTU and the Stalinist Communist Party Marxist-Kenya (CPM-K) worked tirelessly to prevent these strikes from becoming a political challenge to the regime, insisting instead on “no politics” and “leaderless” organization that left the field open for bourgeois forces6.
The uprisings in Nepal (September 2025) and the Philippines (September 2025) confirmed that this pattern extends across Asia. In Nepal, protests triggered by a government ban on 26 social media platforms and fueled by deep resentment over the lavish lifestyles of “nepo kids”—the children of politicians exposed through viral videos—left at least 51 dead. The homes of prominent politicians including former prime ministers were vandalized and set ablaze. Parliament was stormed and burned. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced to resign, but the outcome was a technocratic interim government headed by Karki, with the military playing a decisive role behind the scenes. As the WSWS reported, Chief of Army Staff Ashok Raj Sigdel “warned that the military would be forced to declare a state of emergency if no political solution would be found,” compelling party leaders to consent to parliament’s dissolution.
The Philippines saw its largest demonstrations in two decades, with 100,000 rallying in Manila on September 21—the 53rd anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s declaration of martial law7. The protests were triggered by exposures of massive graft in flood control infrastructure—involving billions stolen through kickbacks to officials and fraudulent contracts. Yet the political character of these protests was “markedly middle-class.” Stalinist organization BAYAN and the pseudo-left Akbayan party led separate rallies, both increasingly aligned with bourgeois factions hostile to China and integrated into Washington’s war preparations. President Marcos Jr. announced his support for the protests “as long as they were peaceful,” attempting to contain any genuine threat to its rule.
Madagascar (October 2025) demonstrated the pattern’s most dramatic expression, with President Andry Rajoelina forcibly removed and exfiltrated by French military aircraft. The uprising erupted in late September when chronic power and water shortages—leaving over 75 percent of the population subsisting on less than €0.80 per day outraged—triggered protests led by the Gen Z Mada formation. When authorities arrested two city politicians who had planned a demonstration on September 25, protests spread rapidly across the island. The regime responded with murderous repression: at least 22 killed, hundreds injured, a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed, and the appointment of General Zafisambo as Prime Minister on October 6 in a desperate militarization that only deepened the crisis.
On October 14, the CAPSAT military unit—which had itself backed Rajoelina’s rise to power in 2009—toppled him through a coordinated intervention. Colonel Michael Randrianirina announced the dissolution of the Senate and High Constitutional Court while maintaining the National Assembly, providing constitutional veneer to what was fundamentally a coup. Most revealing was French imperialism’s direct role: on October 12, Rajoelina fled aboard a French aircraft in an operation coordinated with Paris and approved by President Emmanuel Macron. The company facilitating his escape, TOA Aviation, was the same that had enabled fugitive automotive boss Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn’s extralegal flight from Japan. Macron emphasized “constitutional order” without condemning repression, exposing France’s concern not for democracy but for protecting strategic interests in Malagasy energy, telecommunications, and rare earth minerals.
The Malagasy Trade Union Solidarity collective, comprising about fifty unions, called a general strike demanding Rajoelina’s resignation and wage increases after a freeze since 2022, while calling on the Church and local elites for “dialogue”. The opposition parties Tiako i Madagasikara (TIM) and Malagasy Miara-Miainga (MMM) positioned themselves as alternatives. This was essentially an opportunistic role, “channeling popular anger into the narrow framework of institutional negotiations while safeguarding the foundations of capitalism.”8 The military intervention aimed to defend bourgeois order and preserve the interests of imperialism and the national bourgeoisie, replicating the pattern observed in Egypt and Tunisia 2011 where “the supposed neutrality or support of the army served to defuse mobilization, restore bourgeois order, and ensure the continuity of the capitalist system under a new facade.”
Across all these movements, certain features recur with striking consistency: economic crisis driven by IMF austerity and capitalist breakdown, and chronic social inequality; massive youth and middle-class participation; violent state repression; the promotion of “leaderless” organization by pseudo-left groups; the systematic blocking of independent working-class political action by trade union bureaucracies and parties based on the petty-bourgeoisie; and outcomes that serve imperialist strategic interests while intensifying the exploitation of the masses.
“If they don’t stop drug trafficking, we have to go find them. If there is a conflict, they will have to be killed,” Public Security Minister Tiran Alas reiterated in a meeting held in Jaffna about the operation of Justice, the operation which the government claims to have launched against illegal drugs and the underworld. As a step to intensify and continue to inflict state terror on the oppressed public, the Inspector General of Police released 20 more special police battalions on 20th March, claiming to be for suppressing the underworld, and said that the underworld would be “ended” in a few months.
Deploying of 20 Special Police battalions on March 20, 2024 Image Courtesy of NewsWire
Referring to two shooting incidents reported in Pitigala and Ambalangoda on the night of 11th March, in which four people lost their lives and six others were injured; IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon said the same thing in a different manner when he announced that they (the Police) “will act to response in such a language that is comprehensible to the people involved in such acts.” He made this announcement while addressing an event in Ambalangoda.
By the time the Sri Lankan Inspector General of Police made the aforementioned statement, a suspect arrested by the Peliyagoda police the on previous day had already been shot dead. The said suspect was arrested on 10th March by the Hambegamuwa Police as a suspect in connection with the killing of a monk named Dhammarathana in Kalapaluwawe on 24th January. He was handed over to the Peliyagoda Police. According to the Peliyagoda Police, the suspect, Kalhara Dilshan of Aranagamwila, Polonnaruwa, has served in the Army Commando Force. The Peliyagoda police took him to the Lihiniya Canal area at Attanagalla, Urapola on the next day and shot him dead at around 11 pm. Newspaper “The island“ reported that, this man, who was handcuffed and taken under the protection of an armed police battalion was shot when he tried to run away, pushing a police officer to a precipice.
Thus, as the above announcements make clear, the “Operation Justice,“ is a government terror campaign that allows the police to use force up to the point of extra judicial killing of people in violation of basic human rights and existing laws.
What launched as a police operation on 17th December last year, was expanded to involve the Army too by 11th March. By the time, according to the police reports, there had been 68,931 raids across the country, and 68,577 suspects and, illicit drugs worth 850 million Rupees were arrested. This number includes many innocent people who were arrested on bogus charges. According to police reports, property worth Rs 720 million was seized by the Illegal Assets Unit. The reader should not be misled by these numbers because the so-called operation does not reach the big businessmen who run the illegal drug trade.
There is no record of Operation Justice controlling the illicit drug trade. But the operation has been extended from catching people for sexual harassments in public transport and then to rounding up beggars. One example of the nature of their ‘justice’ is reported on 26th February. One Madawalage Newton, a 69 year mason of Pagoda, Nugegoda, was arrested while waiting for his colleague in his way to work. He was arrested at the Nugegoda railway station in a police operation against “begging, by obstructing traffic”, although he confirmed his identity by showing his national identity card. Nine others were arrested with him and produced to court and then he was sent to a detention center for beggers, and then to the Magazine Prison. Relatives of Newton told the media that the prison informed the family that this elderly man, suffering from a chest pain, died at 1.30 pm on the 7th March. These incidents testify that the goal of the so-called Operation Justice is to suppress the poor and spread state terror in the society by deploying armed forces everywhere to quell the sparks of a public revolt.
In launching the operation, Public Security Minister Alas said that the justice operation in illegal drug raids will not target those who use or import drugs, but those who sell them. Regarding the launch of the operation on December 17, the minister has said on several occasions that his goal is to eliminate the drug retailers because when the drug sellers are gone, the drug users and the importers of drugs will not be able to achieve their goals. This statement is aimed at the poor people in villages and cities who are motivated to involve with illicit drug trade, because they have no other means to earn a living. On February 12, the Inspector General of Police addressed a community police committee meeting in Kalutara and said that he had received a report that “when one of the housemates was caught, the second one went to work”. He described how to continue the operation, “If someone in this business is caught and jailed, if there is a group who bought drugs from him, follow up and find who supplies them now.” If one person in the house is arrested and another person in the same house steps forward to accept the danger, it means that they are involved in serious problems of livelihood. That’s the very reason, why the drug dealers can use them one after the other.
An audio tape, said to be of a conversation between a powerful underworld officer and a police officer has recently become viral. “Do your duty as a policeman. You must do it because it is your duty. It doesn’t matter if a few drug sellers are caught and prosecuted. Don’t try to stop our business,” he said to the officer. The Public Security Minister’s plan fits exactly into this proposal.
Inquired at a media briefing announcing the expansion of the operation, about the public perception that the Operation Justice violates human rights, a police spokesperson denied it. He cited the fact that no one has filed a human rights case against the operation so far. Prosecution requires evidence. As the Police Media Spokesperson knows very well, the police conduct the operation without leaving any evidence for the victim, moving very similar to the underworld. Public complaints are ignored by the higher ups of the police. No one in their right mind would believe that the police, one of the most corrupt institutions in the country, would do justice.
The experiences exposing the hypocritical statement of the police spokesman are numerous. On January 20th, a 22-year-old innocent youth Mindika Aluthgamage was shot dead at a mobile phone shop named Three Star at Telijjawila, Matara. The owner of the shop is a young man named Dilshan Madusankha. Dilshan publicly presented facts about this crime committed by the police. He explained that the assassins came to kill him had mistakenly shot his friend when he was away. He pointed out the reasons. On August 24, 2020, Malimbada police arrested him for stealing money from a Telijjawila liquor store. The police tortured him severely and further scrutiny of the CCTV footage confirmed his innocence. The young man suffered physical disabilities. Even though the mother of the youth complained to all relevant places including the Police Commission, there was no relief. The fundamental rights case 68/2021 which they have filed has been assigned to the Supreme Court and scheduled to be taken up again on February 16. Dilshan said, he received death threats from the police to stop the legal activities and he declared through his facebook account and other media that there is no one to kill him except the police.
The most recent incident was on March 2, when a suspended police sergeant and a social media activist, Nimal Jayasekara, residing at Walakumbura Attham Niwasa in Nagoda, Galle, a whistleblower exposing police corruption, was stormed and shot with a T56, and robbed of his tab computer and mobile phone. He alleges that this was done by the Sri Lanka Police. He challenges the police to arrest the relevant weapon, persons and motorcycle, if they claim they are not involved.
Police Sergeant Nimal Jayasekara’s revelation
It should not be overlooked that many underworld shooters and organized criminals are people with connections to the military or police. The main shooter of the gang that killed five people in Tangalle on December 21 was an ex-navy soldier. On February 17, at Ambalangoda, the gunman who was arrested in an attempt to kill a person was a soldier from the Kilinochchi army camp. An officer of the same camp, who got the contract and directed the soldier, was also arrested.
The threat to social life from the underworld is highlighted by the police in order to suppress public opposition to the actions of the police such as extrajudicial killings, filing false cases, terrorizing social life, etc. The very existence of the police, a tool of the capitalist class hostile to the oppressed people, is a threat to public freedom. It is no secret that large-scale illegal businesses cannot be sustained without the support of the police and the government at a high level. From this point of view, it is clear that, the public has lost their rights for a fearless peaceful life because of the underworld and the police; both being the arms of the capitalist society.
One example of the nature of the control that the police is maintaining on the lives of the common people, is what the Hikkaduwa police did to Gange Nishad Kumara, a 42-year-old resident of Tuduwegoda, Hikkaduwa, on March 14. Kumara is an oppressed fisherman He was arrested near his home, and the reason was not carrying his identity card with him. He was taken by force and asked to paint the police building. He was not released even though the family brought the identity card to the Police Station and confirmed his identity. The police have filed charges against him as a theft suspect because he did not finish the painting and got a lawyer to intervene on his behalf. The mission of so-called justice is to secure and develop this situation.
The “Global Initiative” says, “According to police data, crimes in 2022 (in Sri Lanka) increased by 60% monthly, and the number of petty crimes reported in January rose to 29,908 by the end of November from 1,676”. They pointed out in an article titled “The crime cost of Sri Lanka”, that, “economic stress has also generated an increase in illegal activities as measured by the Global Organized Crime Index.” Another proof is that homicides of all types rose from 273 in 2019 just before the economic crisis to 533 in 2022 at its peak.
Operation Justice did not control this tendency but exacerbated it. In the first 6 months of 2023, the number of shootings that was approximately 4 per month, has increased to 7 per month this year after Operation Justice was implemented.
The government is following the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” policy of 2016-2022, which has been used to suppress insurgencies. It killed between 7,000 and 12,000 poor Filipinos. Most of them were urban poor. A Human Rights Watch investigation found that the police were involved in falsifying evidence to justify extrajudicial killings.
The increase in usage of illicit drugs and enhancement of crime is a global phenomenon. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that 296 million people have used drugs in 2021. According to the report, it is a 23% increase from before. In the past 10 years, the number of people with mental illnesses due to drug usage has risen by 45% to 39.5 million. The drug industry is one such large market. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has stated that this industry is twice the size of the world car market.
The class rule of the top 10%, which swallows 76% of the world’s income, has created a market of 296 million consumers worldwide from the youth in the bottom 50%, who receive only 2% of it. No capitalist regime can save the people from this situation. As long as capitalism exists, only the criminals needed for the respective businesses will be supplied from the oppressed sections of the society as well as from the security forces.
The only class capable of countering the attack, the working class, should be independently mobilized against this self-enhancing crime-ring. Only they are capable of rallying the oppressed sections and launch a powerful counter-attack against the calamity prepared and implemented by the capitalist states in collaboration with the trillionaire drug mafia. We call upon the workers to build up their independent organizations, where different tendencies genuinely representing the interests of the working class are mobilized, to fight back this menace, to safeguard oppressed against conspiracies of the state and to organize protests including pickets, demonstrations, public meetings, and strikes, hence launching a movement culminating in a general strike to defend the lives of the workers and the oppressed.
[This article is a slightly modified version of the article originally published here in Sinhala on March 22, 2024]
Statement of the Colombo Action Committee for People’s Struggles
Image courtesy:adaderana.lk
It is already clear that the state terror unleashed in the name of Operation Yukthiya is one way the government is intensifying its repression against the youth and the rest of the oppressed. Its goal is the protracted class struggle.
The government suddenly jumped on to the crackdown on drugs as one of the measures to forcefully maintain the much hated capitalist state; to keep the society terrorized with violence and to garner the support of a backward social stratum. This has already given way to allow the police to act beyond the limits of the existing law and making that situation the norm in the country. What the country has is a police force that has a long history of being warrented and been operating to kill persons outside the judicial procedure.
A complaint made to the Police Commission by Aruna Indika Wijesuriya, a professional photographer based in Madapatha, Piliyandala, exposes the repressive drama, hence bringing us a picture of what is happening right now across the country. According to the complaint, on December 6, the police raided the young man’s house at night, searched it thoroughly and found nothing suspicious, but arrested the young man and demanded a ransom of 10,000 rupees for his release. It is alleged that Sergeant Alwis and police driver Madushanka have requested the bribe and Indika’s friends gave them the requested amount. He was released on police bail the next day.
Aruna’s father, Shanta Wijesuriya, who is a well-known journalist and political activist, came to know about this later and went with his son to Kesbewa police station to complain about this, but the police avoided accepting the complaint. The police hunters were furious because the father and son tried to complain against the police for taking bribes.
On December 13, a group of plain clothed police officers assaulted Aruna, searched his house and arrested him again. When the youth made a phone call to his cousin, the police surrounded the relative’s house as well. Again, around 3 am, On December 17, a police team including Alwis, who was accused of taking bribes, surrounded the youth’s home. There, a young man named Shehan was also with the police, and the police showed Shehan something that appeared to be a pack containing the illegal drug called ‘Ice’ and asked, “Shehan, did Aruna give you this?” But, facing protests from those present, the police retreated with the following warning: “Aruna Oya Adath Dinum( (Aruna, you have won today too)”.
Later, on February 2, the police officer, identified as Paul, had threatened Wijesuriya – the father of the youth – at Kesbewa courts premises saying that he would “shoot him if he tries to be smart”. On the same day at around 5 pm, the police raided a place where the young man was taking photographs and arrested him. The next day, his girlfriend, who went to visit him, was arrested on the charge that she had recorded the conversation of the police officers, beaten and harassed by removing her clothes forcibly, checking for illegal drugs. The cousin who visited the youth was also arrested and later released. The court rejected the request of the police to send the young man for rehabilitation, alleging that the boy who was brought to the court with ‘ice’ had used the substance. Allegations that he had used it were nullified by the medical evidence. There is no place to complain about these injustices. The institutions which claim to be investigating and redressing such grievances continue to ignore complaints. The response received from many such institutions was that there is no evidence to prove the allegations.
On February 6, social media reported an incident where the father of two was arrested by the Baddegama Police. The victim, Jeewantha Kumara of Ganegama, within the jurisdiction of the Baddegama Police was arrested with 2 grams and 350 milligrams of “ice”. Police assaulted Jeewantha and his brother, and their sister, a school-girl, video-taped how the police team in plainclothes assaulted her two brothers. She watched and taped how one of the police team tried to put a black parcel in her brother’s pocket. The police assaulted her, snatched her phone, arrested Jeewanta and filed a case. The phone which recorded the incident was never returned and has disappeared with all the evidence. The girl and her other brother had to be admitted to Karapitiya Hospital and receive treatments. There is no reason to think that the complaints made to the Elpitiya Senior Superintendent of Police and Galle Assistant Superintendent of Police will bring justice to these oppressed people.
The case of shooting down a carpenter at Narammala is a well-known crime among hundreds of such incidents. On January 18, police personnel in plain clothes ordered him to stop the lorry he was driving. When he did not stop, the vehicle was chased and he was shot dead. This is the way the so-called Operation Yukthiya is being carried out and the Public Security Minister Tiran Alas has assured in Parliament that the operation will continue irrespective of any objections such as concerns of human rights.
This attempt by the state repressive apparatus to pose itself as the agents of morality against immorality, is deceitful, evil, and despicable. It is a desperate attempt to curb the resistance of the working and oppressed people, arising from the implementation of austerity dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), hence imposing the crisis of capitalist class rule on the oppressed masses.
The root of all crimes is the rule of the bankrupt capitalist class. It is not limited to Sri Lanka. These rampant economic, political and social problems are not caused by illicit-drug users. The drug business operates through politically supported transnational and domestic parasitic crime networks. Addiction to drugs itself is the result of social unrest flowing from endless economic, political and social problems. Under these circumstances, the daily operations by military and police, establishing military police roadblocks at every other inch and conducting search operations are nothing but setting up the mechanism to subjugate the lives of the workers and oppressed people to the conditions of the police state. These operations have nothing to do with eradication of illicit drugs.
The statistics of the World Bank show how the poverty in the society is increasing day by day. Poverty, which was 11.3 percent of Sri Lanka’s population in 2019, has increased to 12.7 percent in 2020; and then from 13.1 percent in 2021 to 25 percent in 2022, and to 27.9 percent in 2024. This is a manifestation of the bankruptcy of capitalism on a global scale. World Bank reports show that between September 2022 and March 2023, world poverty increased by 11 million from 648 to 659 million. That’s by calculating the income below $2.15 per day. But, taking into account the lower middle income level and upper middle income level countries, i.e. the levels of $3.65 and $6.85, this figure rises by another 28 million. The poor are consumed by hunger, disease and discomfort. On the other hand, the income of the top 1% supre-rich is increasing by leaps and bounds.
The results of this level of inequality include the escalation of social tragedy, from drug addiction to various crimes and suicides. There was a recent incident where a 14-year-old boy jumped to the fast approaching train and committed suicide near Tambalagamuwa railway station on February 11. Following the sound of the train’s horn, the other children moved out of the way, but this child spread his hands and was smiling while waiting for the train to go over him. The train driver has stated that he had never seen anything like this in his entire life. Later, the child’s guardian aunt told the media that the child was suffering from acute malnutrition.
Attention of the masses is, and should be, focused on these issues. The world is gripped by the struggles of workers, farmers and youth. Anti-democratic measures and terror-mongering displayed by governments bringing social media censorship laws, anti-terror laws are not at all manifestations of the strength of capitalist governments, which are largely discredited among the masses, so lacking popular support, but manifestations of their organic weakness. Those governments cannot fulfill even a single economic or social need of the people. Anywhere in the world, such regimes have been enabled to persist because trade unions and pseudo-left fronts have infiltrated every instance of class struggle, to disrupt, control and compromise mass struggles. We workers, peasants and other oppressed people must realize that self-defense does not come at all from official capitalist institutions, and that freedom and security cannot be guaranteed except through the formation of an independent mass movement against the capitalist establishment under the working class revolutionary programme.
We, the Colombo Action Committee for People’s Struggles, request all progressive people opposed to capitalist attacks to come forward to build and unify action committees at workplaces and residential areas, which can ensure the safety of the oppressed people. Only such a mass movement can really wipe out capitalist rule and all the tendencies that block the path of social progress.
Abolish all repressive laws!
Forward towards a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government!
[This statement was originally published here in Sinhales on February 17, 2024]
