Southern Lanka has finally gone bankrupt -- out of money. But how? It's simple, so let's uncomplicate the stories you will hear elsewhere. Ceylon has spent its entire independence squandering its economic advantages in order to promote Sinhalese and Buddhism over all other people and religions. Because the violent politiics separated everyone into included and excluded, the island went from a multinational post-colonial country into a divided land where Tamil Eelam and the remaining Southern Lanka as separate single-language regions. Southern Lanka has spent so much money funding its military (army, navy, air force) and police to perpetrate violence on Tamil-speaking peoples, in order to allow Sinhalese to take over Tamil businesses, rather than peacefully building up the economy for everyone.
Sinhalese of the South are protesting against the current leaders, the Rajapakse family, for their decisions to ignore the foreign trade deficits, IMF requests, and to deflect the problem by banning foreign non-organic fertilizer. But in turn, the Lankan leaders instead would prefer blaming Covid for the huge deficit caused by lower tourism and tea exporters. But is Southern Lanka the only country that experienced the Covid-19 pandemic? No. In fact, every country has been going through the pandemic. So much for easy answers. What about the idea that SL's economy going into debt because the Rajapakses took easy money from China to build vanity projects with no utility? Well, SL and Pakistan are not the only countries that has taken Chinese money for questionable projects, but not all ended up like SL. And not all countries facing serious economic problems right now took money from China, like Russia. The China explanation doesn't work, even though you will surely hear it if you ask America.
So how do we draw a direct line from Southern Lanka's ethnic chauvinism and genocide, which is its political and moral bankruptcy, to its current economic bankruptcy? Easy, not only did Southern Lanka spend all that money destroying Tamil Eelam, and hurting its own economic prospects in the process, but the key is what it did after the war, during so-called "peacetime". Instead of moving resources from the military to peacetime economy building work, SL expanded its military after the end of the war in 2009, using the military as a glorified welfare program in the most expensive way possible. Keep in mind that the military is 99% Sinhalese, and the police is 95% Sinhalese. The military is larger than the UK's military while SL has only 1/3 the population of the UK. 7 of 8 army brigades were deployed in Tamil Eelam, with a 6:1 civilian to soldier ratio in TE, and a 2:1 civilian to soldier ratio in Jaffna. After the war, instead of creating peacetime economy building activities, SL just took away jobs from Tamils and gave them to the Sinhalese soldiers. The military is the most expensive, most destructive, most violent form of welfare for Sinhalese at the expense of Tamils.
Just as the 1983 pogrom Black July was premeditated violence against Tamils in order for Sinhalese to take over their businesses and factories in Colombo, the growth of the mliitary in the post-2009 "peace" period only makes sense when you realize that the military was a huge, violent, welfare program for Sinhalese. It's important to not let people use the story of Tamil suffering for the narrow goal of regime change against the Rajapakses. The island will never get better without true meaningful justice and reparations for the Tamil-speaking peoples, and that can only happen with a political solution that is Tamil Eelam. The Sinhalese have always voted for violent racism against Tamils, which is how they got the Rajapakses since 2005 -- it's the cresendo of what they want. The Sinahelse desire to oppress Tamils and Muslims is too easy to manipulate.
You reap what you sow. And here we are.
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