Strings of white flags flutter all around this small, mostly Buddhist town, with posters mourning the loss of a local man, appearing every few yards. In a span of five days, the pixelated image of Chaminda Lakshan, in a bright pink shirt, has gone viral on social media.
Mr. Lakshan, who was shot dead by police on Tuesday, became the first fatal victim of police violence in the current wave of citizens’ protests across Sri Lanka in the wake of its crushing economic meltdown.
Chaminda Lakshan’s home | Photo Credit: Meera Srinivasan
Several thousand people are agitating on the streets every day, against the government’s “failed” response to the island’s unprecedented crisis. Struggling to find food, fuel, and medicines amid severe shortages and rapid price hikes, they demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resign.
For Mr. Lakshan’s wife, R.S. Priyangani, this week has been a blur. The last time she saw her husband alive was when he set out to find petrol for his motorbike. Only his lifeless body returned. “He wasn’t going for a protest or anything like that,” she says, preparing for her husband’s funeral on Saturday.
Their modest home is on a narrow lane in a village near Rambukkana, in Kegalle district, located on the way to the central highlands from the capital Colombo. The Rajapaksas’ ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP OR People’s Front) secured nearly 67 % of the votes in the district in the 2020 general election. The railway station in this town is the nearest to the Pinnawala elephant orphanage on the tourist trail.
Piumi Upekshika Lakshani, daughter of deceased K.D. Chaminda Lakshan, 41, who got caught up in the clash as he went to the petrol station at Rambukkana to fill his motorcycle on April 19, 2022 amid the country’s ongoing economic crisis, cries as she speaks in Rambukkana, Sri Lanka on April 20, 2022. | Photo Credit: Reuters
The walls of the Lakshan’s home are painted bright blue, and the roof is made of tin sheets. In the living room, barely 10x5 feet, lies the embalmed body of Mr. Lakshan for visitors to pay their respects.
Although Mr. Lakshan had been a youth activist in the opposition United National Party, family life kept him busy. He took to selling fruit to support his wife and two teenage children. On the fateful Tuesday, after queuing for hours and somehow finding petrol for his fruit truck, he decided to try his luck with his two-wheeler.
That was the day when other residents like him, who had been waiting for hours near the town’s petrol shed, spotted a fuel tanker and demanded that the fuel be distributed. But seeing no attempt to unload the fuel, presumably due to an imminent price hike, the crowd blocked the railway tracks nearby and agitated. Police arrived at the spot and in their attempt to disperse the protesters after hours of the stand-off, opened fire, resulting in the death of Mr Lakshan.
Turning point
Sensing tension ahead of the funeral on Saturday, authorities have deployed the police and military in the area.
“I have no hate for the police or army. But they are all the arms of the state that killed my husband. It is five days since they shot him, and no one has been arrested. I want justice to be served,” Ms. Priyangani says. “It was Chaminda who dreamt big for our children and took care of them. I have no idea how I will manage alone now.”
R.S. Priyangani, wife of Mr. Lakshan | Photo Credit: Meera Srinivasan
Authorities have promised an “independent inquiry” into the incident — in which 13 others were seriously injured — that has only made the Rajapaksa administration more unpopular. At Colombo’s seafront where thousands gather every day in protest, Mr. Lakshan’s picture has been placed alongside journalists and activists killed or forcibly disappeared during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s two-term Presidency.
For locals, Mr. Lakshan is now a martyr. “I didn’t do my juice business yesterday,” says M. G. Indrakumari. “He has given his life for the country. The least we can do is to go and pay our respects.”
Some also see this as a moment of reckoning for the country’s majority ethnic community.
According to senior journalist K.W. Janaranjana, who was at the funeral, the “Sinhala nationalist mindset” prevented them from seeing how Tamils in the north and east suffered for decades. “Now when severe shortages hit us and people suffer, they are calling out the Rajapaksas’ dynastic politics, corruption and repression,” he observes.
Calling it an “important moment” for the country, where the youth are taking a “strong position”, Mr. Janaranjana says: “the slogans chanted in the protest movement are impressive and call for changes like abolition of the executive presidency. This is an opportunity to imagine a new Sri Lanka.”
