TY - JOUR AU - A. R. M. Imtiyaz, PY - 2023/03/10 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Janatha Aragalaya (the People’s Struggle) in Sri Lanka JF - ASIAN Journal of International Peace & Security (AJIPS) JA - AJIPS VL - 6 IS - 4 SE - DO - UR - http://ajips.fairlips.org/index.php/ajips/article/view/2022-vol-6-issue-4-janatha-aragalaya-the-peoples-struggle-in-sri SP - 65 - 79 AB - <p>On July 9, 2022, angry citizens, while protesting economic mismanagement, stormed<br>the Sri Lanka’s President palace in Colombo. On July 13, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa<br>escaped to the neighboring island nation of the Maldives and flew into Singapore from<br>the Maldives on July 14 evening, after fleeing Sri Lanka amid a deepening crisis and<br>widespread protests there. The primary objective of this paper is to provide some<br>initial thoughts to the factors that led to the Aragalaya (struggle) and thus this article<br>attempts to understand the major sources that gave birth to Janatha Aragalaya,<br>commonly named by Sri Lankans as the GotaGoHome protest movement, significance of<br>the movement and some suggestions to build democratic and peaceful Sri Lanka. The<br>article first provides some primary information about the island’s demographics and<br>socio-economic conditions. It then discusses the causes that gave birth to the protest<br>movement. This section also attempts to provide some thoughts to understand why the<br>state and its institutions such as security forces did not use violence against the<br>movement. For the preparation of the article, the author conducted interviews with Sri<br>Lankans who took part in the Aragalaya. Conversations were held in Tamil, Sinhala, and<br>English speakers throughout the protests from April 12 to July 17 via WhatsApp and<br>Facebook messengers.</p> ER -