Protests

January 29, 2017, 12:17 pm 

One protest march we approve of and applaud loudly was a fairly worldwide one! Just as the 45th President of the United States of America was being sworn in on the late morning of January 21, 2017, a couple of streets away a quarter million people, mostly women, gathered and marched against the new President. "Two million Americans poured into the streets for women-led demonstrations, the scale of which were unseen in a generation" mostly in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, apart from the Washington DC rally. Slogans were many, hoisted above the marches such as ‘Welcome to your first day. We will not go away’. 400,000 marched in New York past Trump Towers. The cries in London and other major cities around the world were ‘Dump Trump’, ‘Reject hate, reinstate politics’ ‘No to racism, no to Trump’ and such like.

These women-led protests in many cities around the US and the world would probably have been hurriedly organized or just took off on the spur of the moment to show solidarity against the new President of the USA.

In Sri Lanka

I need to categorically state that I disapprove of almost all protests in our country of the recent past, and even those to come. The majority Lankans feel likewise. Doctors have struck work. They say emergency services are attended to but hospitals and particularly OPDs have shut down with immense trouble to patients. Their reasons: asking for car permits; higher salaries and absurdly, against the ECTA Pact with India. Their protests are ill grounded and only a cause of disturbance.

The Federation of University Students are forever forsaking lectures; gathering together; battling the police and making a nuisance of themselves. Their reason these many months and years of protest was against SAITM, the private medical college. It’s courses have been approved of by the government so what are these students from other campuses shouting about? I ask pointedly is this the right time to cause mayhem on streets when the police are trying to instill sanity on vehicle drivers and elected leaders are striving hard to bring democracy and fair play back to the country? Also trying hard to right an economy destroyed by the previous government’s profligacy. Is it for these that our soldiers laid down their lives to bring peace to the country? Is it for these that their mothers suffered labour pains, hunger pangs, faced deprivation, yet strove and succeeded in nurturing them to adulthood and their fathers managed to facilitate their entry to medical college? To Menika, they are scum.

Then comes the Joint Opposition. The idea of writing about protests was because the mind is fearful this Friday as this group gathers to march in protest. Their slogan? What do they oppose? The burden of the COL on the poorer people for whom they care not a jot; but show false concern? Certainly not! We all know, barring the village idiot, that they strive to topple the Maithripala – Ranil government, seize power, share it with family and close friends and live as they please, sending us ever downwards in every way. If given half a chance they will surely return to rule even more tyrannically than in the previous decade or two.

Will we ever see people acting graciously en masse, living and letting live? Looking around at the tactics of many, one despairs. It is not a frivolous statement but a statement of fact that we Lankans are like no other: we have no loyalty to country; no gratitude to those we should be grateful to and no limit to greed.

Well known protests

I went back in world history. One of the most famous protest marches was the Storming of the Bastille and the arrest of Governor de Launay on the morning of July 14, 1789. A group formed of craftsmen and salesmen decided to fight back and ran to the Invalides in Paris to steal some weapons. The crowd knew that a pile of powder was stocked in the Bastille and so they stormed it and ignited the French revolution with the cry of Liberté, Egalaté and Fraternité. In the melee, prisoners escaped. The monarchy was overthrown and the royal family guillotined along with aristocrats. I did not study history as a subject in senior secondary school so knew about the French Revolution from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities and Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel series. As young teenagers, my friends and I thrilled at the daring rescue of French aristocrats from the guillotine by the British pretend-fob of a Lord who signed off with the symbol of the pimpernel.

In Britain, they are rather restrained preferring probably the stiff upper lip to putting their grievances on public show. Also Margaret Thatcher put paid to the constant demands of labour with her strict rules. We remember seeing in newspapers pictures of protests in strategic places in London when the LTTE was present in force here in Sri Lanka. There was a massive protest in Westminster opposite Parliament. A rather rare occurrence of protests was over the Brexit decision. ‘March for Europe’ rallies were held across UK on September 3, 2016.  Thousands of pro-Europe protesters marched in London, calling for the UK to strengthen its ties to the continent following the Brexit business. This showed without doubt that the younger Britons and Londoners were for remaining in the European Union while the older, conservative persons voted to get out of the EU for fear of immigrants pouring in and the Brit economy.

In the US there have been marches by the African-Americans; more recently, consequent to police shooting of a couple of young African American men.

They also stage marches and rallies in Washington which are one-time events. Two exceptions are the March for Life and Rolling Thunder, both held annually. The March for Life is a protest against abortion held on January 22 marking the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case legalizing abortion. The march has been held annually since 1974, typically drawing several hundred thousand demonstrators. Rolling Thunder is a motorcycle demonstration held since 1987 on Memorial Day to raise awareness of issues related to American Prisoners of War/Missing in Action persons.

As I write this on Friday January 27 afternoon, I imagine people gathering in Nugegoda for the Joint Opposition rally – in protest of what or asking for what? I do not know what they have announced as their reason for protesting. It is of course against yahapalanaya and in the dim hope they can topple the existing government and save many skins now being investigated for corruption, causing disappearances and even murder most foul.

Our heartfelt sympathies are for those who will attempt reaching their homes in Nugegoda and beyond after a hard day’s and week’s work.