On April 12, the New York Times published a piece on the protests in Sri Lanka titled, "An Angry Public Wants Sri Lanka's President Gone". The title is accurate — the people are angry and they do want President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose criminal neglect and inaction has led to an economic crisis that is slowly but surely turning into a humanitarian one, out of office. The people are on the streets, standing strong under the scorching midday sun and the heavy rains of the night, in acts of dissent, protest and resistance. Yet, the way the article was written, from the language it chose to employ when describing these protests to the cover photo they chose to use, paints a picture of violent protests across the country — an inaccurate and harmful description.

Protestors on the ground know the importance, the necessity, of peaceful protests. They have exhibited extraordinary levels of patience and composure in the face of a government that has been cruel and brutal in its dismissal of the current crisis. They know the consequences of violent acts of resistance and how the government needs only a slight indication of conflict to step in and crack down on dissent. To not acknowledge this is to dismiss the energy and labor, physical and emotional, of a public that has been suffering for months. It is insulting and deceiving.

The most offending line of the article reads: “Tens of thousands of protesters are now swarming the streets of the capital, Colombo, and clashing with security forces outside the ruling family’s official residences.” The use of the word “clashing” and of a cover photo that places protestors and security forces on opposite sides of a barricade is indicative of the lack of care and sensitivity employed when supposedly reputable media companies, ones that set the tone of global political discussions, report on the Global South. It is unethical and irresponsible journalism. It is also not surprising.

Moustafa Bayoumi, a professor at City University of New York wrote an article in The Guardian three years ago on how Palestinians are killed twice: “first by bullet or bomb, and next by the language used to describe their deaths.” He critiqued the use of the passive voice when reporting on the violence enacted on the bodies of the displaced and disenfranchised — this same passive voice and ambiguous language is present in a piece the New York Times published on the raid of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Palestine on April 15, just two days ago.

I do not intend to draw comparisons between Palestine and Sri Lanka: the state of Israel has occupied Palestine, and has violently abused the people of Palestine while Sri Lanka is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis caused by economic collapse. The crises are vastly different but the reporting remains the same. The structural and extrajudicial violence the government has been complicit in and the scale, the intensity and the various forms of resistance people are engaging in require recognition. Otherwise, it is no less than malicious erasure.

This is what they should have reported on.

They should have reported on the peaceful protests that have been taking place in Sri Lanka for more than a month, with one of the very first taking place in Kohuwela. Here, the people living in the area gathered together, without affiliation to any political party, in silent protest, holding placards in candlelight. But of course, this wasn’t sensational or exotic enough to be included.

Photo Courtesy of Belinda Seneviratne

They should have reported on the scale of the protests taking place continuously at Galle Face, in the south of the country. They have been taking place for over a week now, with some estimates of the participants ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 and the entire area has been renamed to reflect one of the strongest rallying cries heard in Sri Lanka: Gota Go Village. This is taken from the protest chant — Gota Go Home — which is directed at the President who is referred to informally as Gota.

Photo Courtesy of Mithsandi Seneviratne

Gota Go Village has spontaneously turned into a site, a village, a community, which combines activism and resistance with informed learning rooted in community care. There is a public library, composed entirely of donated books so that protesters can take a break and read a book or two.

Photo Courtesy of Saheli Wikramanayake

There are mobile toilets set up. There is a charging station for phones and laptops. There is a legal aid tent set up and run by law students.

Photo Courtesy of Mithsandi Seneviratne

There is a first aid tent to attend to healthcare emergencies as well as a medical tent with trained medical teams and volunteers to provide psychosocial support to organizers and protestors.

Photo Courtesy of Mithsandi Seneviratne

Community-organized initiatives provide free food and water — they are in for the long haul. There are tents for storage and distribution of food and drinks, especially for iftar when Muslims who protest break fast as well as for protestors who work and stay throughout the night.

Photo Courtesy of Mithsandi Seneviratne

There is a collection point for used plastic bottles and some of them are now part of an art installation — a fist with a middle finger pointing towards the sky, a red cloth draped around it in the same way the Rajapaksas wear their national outfit. At the end of every day of protesting, people walk around and collect the trash so that there’s barely any left in the morning on the new day of protesting.

Photo Courtesy of Anya Weerasinghe

There are “Teach-Outs” being organized at protest sites, conducted in all three languages of Sri Lanka — Sinhala, Tamil and English — which focus on state violence, ethnic polarization and resistance in a democracy to build collective political consciousness. The people of Sri Lanka’s reclaiming of public spaces such as Independence Square, a national monument commemorating the end of British rule in Ceylon, to dissent against authoritarian and divisive rule and demand accountability is a powerful moment in our history. There are people breaking out into songs and chants spontaneously, with one of the most forceful and moving demonstrations taking place when protestors sang “Do You Hear the People Sing?” in front of the Presidential Secretariat. They gathered together and are painting a massive banner as commentary on the unsustainable and destructive environmental policies implemented by the current government.

Photo Courtesy of Mithsandi Seneviratne

They should have reported on the 235 protests that have taken place since March 30, many outside the suburbs of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital. But there is a reason that the South has been more active with resisting on the streets — the militarization of the North-East of the country makes it that much more difficult for Tamil and Muslim minorities to take to the streets. Yet, they remain on the streets, braving police brutality and crackdown to make their demands known: repealing of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, a draconian law which has been used to target minorities, demilitarization, the release of land belonging to the people of the North and a call to expedite resettlement. None of this was mentioned by the New York Times, and this only feeds into the erasure of the struggles faced by minorities in ethno-nationalist states such as Sri Lanka.

There was a memorial held on April 17, in acknowledgement of the Easter Sunday bombings which occurred in April 2019 and for which no one has been held accountable as of today. Lining the walls housing the Presidential Secretariat were posters with faces of journalists and activists who disappeared for dissenting against and reporting on the human rights abuses committed under the Rajapaksa regime. The black and white posters, with a jarring question mark in red above each image, are compelling and boldly question and condemn the strongman tactics employed by the Rajapaksas, questions once only asked in private.

They should have reported on the police brutality rampant in Sri Lanka, on the violence the police meted out to participants of the Mirihana protest on March 31, where protesters were arrested, brutally assaulted and denied medical care. They should have reported on the various allegations of police officers in civilian clothes instigating violence, to justify the imposition of a state of emergency. If they did so, they would have known that these protests are not clashes.

Photo Courtesy of Anya Weerasinghe

I do not intend to romanticize the protests happening in Sri Lanka, for there is much that needs to be done by the public to unlearn the habits imprinted upon us by the ethnocratic state we have lived under, to dismantle Sinhalese-Buddhist supremacy and to ensure justice for all Sri Lankans. This will require more than the current moment, but communal accountability for the past and the implementation of inclusive and systemic change.

But it is a moment. And a revolutionary moment rife with the potential for change at that. If leading media organizations such as the New York Times, that determine the content and tone of which fight is worth listening to on a global platform, trivialize all dissent and disruption into a clash, then they harm the legitimacy and continuity of the cause they seek to document.

A single sentence cannot hope to capture the nuances, complexities and contradictions of the moment that is happening in Sri Lanka right now, and no one should attempt to do so. Especially if the pain of the moment is not your own.

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