The reason why US president Donald Trump took that foolish decision on February 28 to bomb Iran without any provocation from the victim has now been established as his bowing to pressure from Israel and its powerful lobby in Washington that financially backed President Trump’s presidential campaign. It was originally thought to be a two week affair with a hands down victory to the aggressor but it backfired. Even after four months, with Iranian blockage and President Trump’s counter blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, the war is dragging on and causing immense financial strain and economic hardship not only to the two warring countries but throughout the world.

A war induced cost-push inflation and resource constraint combined with the climate crisis is causing crippling food shortages in several countries. But President Trump’s rigmarole of conflicting announcements about an imminent solution to the Iran war continues and surprisingly it is not the Iranian regime that he wanted to overthrow in the first place but his own regime that is desperately looking for a face saving outcome. It is in this context the re-emergence of President Trump’s 2020 Abraham Accord calling all Arab countries including Egypt and Jordan to join in and start normalising relations with Israel deserves critical consideration. Already the Saudi Fatwa House has rejected the accord although the Saudi regime, like the UAE, was secretly supporting the US-Israel war against Iran.

The strategic reason for bombing Iran was to remove that country’s legitimate desire to become a counterbalance against Israel’s existing nuclear supremacy in the Middle East. It is an open secret that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is the direct outcome of a US strategy to develop that country as the superpower’s deputy sheriff to oversee the US manufactured Middle East Order. Currently, Israel is one of the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons and it is the only one in the Middle East. Israel does not want any Arab country to challenge its military might and that was the reason why the US bombed and destroyed two Arab countries, Libya and Iraq, that were previously thought to be preparing to strengthen their own defence capabilities by producing what the US and its Western allies called weapons of mass destruction.

The question why an Arab or Muslim country in the Middle East shouldn’t also possess nuclear weapons like Israel is never raised by Western analysts. To Israel, on the other hand, the existing order provides a splendid opportunity to realise the long term Zionist dream of Greater Israel, which is said to extend from the Nile to the Euphrates. But to the Zionist extremists it stretches as far as Saudi Arabia. These extremists have not forgotten how the Jewish tribes in Mecca during Prophet Muhammad’s time were treated and eventually evicted from Arabia. Israel’s invasion of and scorched earth policy over Southern Lebanon, its occupation of 70 percent of Gaza’s territory and systematic, illegal eviction of Palestinians from their land and properties in the Occupied West Bank are all part of that grand ideal of Greater Israel. Israel has made a mockery of President Trump’s every ceasefire declaration over Gaza and Lebanon.

Coming back to the Abraham Accord, the original intention of this proposal was commercial; it was to exploit the marine oil and gas resources of Gaza to which Palestinians were legally denied access. President Trump wanted Israel to join the other two signatories, Bahrain and UAE, and build an oil and gas resource base at its own doorstep. When President Trump lost the election in 2020 his successor Joe Biden cajoled, without success, Saudi Arabia to sign in and President Trump’s visit to the Middle East after being re-elected was also to entrap the Gulf countries including Egypt and Jordan to sign that accord to “achieve peace with prosperity”. Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy for Peace Missions, was optimistic in one of his media interviews that the accord would net in more countries than expected and would bring peace and stability to the Middle East region. Is there a hidden agenda here?

So far, no Arab government has openly endorsed the Saudi Fatwa House’s rejection of the accord.  Historically, if there is one characteristic that dominates inter-Arab relations it is their disunity. In his 2019 publication, Arabs, Tim Mackintosh-Smith detailed this aspect with plenty of evidence. In the 1948 Palestine war, for example, had it not been for Jordan’s behind the scenes negotiations with Israel the Egyptian army would have won that war, according to Jewish historian Ilan Pappe. However, since that defeat the Arab countries should have realised that Israel is an existentialist threat to all of them and they need to act collectively to strengthen their own defence capabilities. Instead, all they did was to surrender their defence needs to Britain first and the US later. Today the US maintains around eight bases in the region including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. When the war broke out in February, Iran retaliated by attacking these bases which made the Gulf countries, which frightened the regimes and made them run to President Trump to halt attack from those bases. President Trump’s response was the Abraham Accord.

Of all the Arab countries the one that is said to be the most American is Jordan, which is historically bestowed with the custodianship over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest precinct of Islam and Muslims. It also protects the Islamic identity of Jerusalem. But the US and Israel are now conniving to erase that identity and wants to divest Jordan of its custodianship over Al-Aqsa, all in the name of transforming Jerusalem into a world centre of multi-faith with shared heritage and equal access to all three monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If this were to be allowed the Zionists will eventually destroy Al-Aqsa and build David’s temple on that very spot. If Jordan were to sign the Abraham Accord and normalise relations with Israel, that would be the ultimate gift to far right Zionism and President Trump could advertise that as his historic achievement out of the Iran war. Will the world of Islam wake up to prevent realising his hidden agenda?

The post Iran War, Abraham Accord and the Hidden Agenda first appeared on Groundviews.

Every monsoon season in Sri Lanka now arrives with a familiar sequence of events. Heavy rainfall triggers floods and landslides. Hazard warnings are issued. Disaster response teams mobilise. Relief packages are distributed. Temporary shelters open. Roads are cleared and damaged infrastructure is gradually restored.

These systems matter and Sri Lanka has, over time, developed significant institutional capacity around disaster coordination and emergency response. Hazard forecasting has improved. Evacuation systems are stronger than they once were. The state is increasingly capable of responding once visible climate disasters occur.

However, climate crises do not end when floodwaters recede. For many communities, the deeper consequences emerge slowly and often remain largely invisible to formal systems. Livelihoods collapse over months rather than days. Debt accumulates after repeated crop failures. Informal workers lose income during prolonged disruptions. Families migrate under pressure. Children leave school temporarily as households struggle to recover economically. Women and girls face heightened risks of exploitation and violence as financial insecurity deepens.

These are not secondary effects of climate disasters. They are central to how climate vulnerability actually unfolds and yet, most climate governance systems remain designed primarily around hazards rather than social deterioration. This reflects a deeper inherited logic within climate governance itself.

Across much of South Asia, including Sri Lanka, disaster management systems evolved around the administration of emergencies: monitoring environmental threats, coordinating relief distribution, restoring services and managing recovery after crises occur. The institutional focus has largely remained on responding to visible damage rather than identifying the conditions through which harm escalates over time.

As a result, climate vulnerability is often treated as something that appears during disasters rather than something that accumulates long before catastrophe becomes visible. This, therefore, creates a major gap between how institutions measure risk and how communities actually experience it.

The limits of hazard-focused systems

The climate governance architecture still operates through largely fragmented institutional systems. Disaster management institutions track rainfall intensity, floods, landslide risks and infrastructure damage. Labour systems focus separately on employment and migration. Social protection systems respond to poverty thresholds and welfare eligibility. Protection actors intervene once exploitation or violence becomes visible. But climate vulnerability cuts across all of these systems simultaneously and yet these warning signs rarely become integrated into anticipatory governance systems.

As discussed previously in this series, Sri Lanka’s geography of vulnerability was shaped through colonial systems of extraction, uneven land access and labour dependency. Today, climate shocks continue to interact with these inherited inequalities but governance systems still frequently treat disasters as isolated environmental events rather than as stress multipliers operating through already unequal social systems.

The consequence is a model of governance that remains largely reactive.

The warning signs already exist

One of the central challenges in climate governance is not the absence of information but the fragmentation of it. Communities themselves often recognise escalating risks long before institutions intervene. In many cases, warning signs already exist well before a crisis becomes publicly visible but most systems are not designed to connect these signals together. Climate forecasts may sit within one institutional database while migration patterns remain tracked elsewhere. Livelihood stress indicators may be collected through welfare systems without being integrated into disaster preparedness frameworks. Protection concerns may only become visible once cases of exploitation or violence are formally reported.

As climate disruption intensifies, these institutional separations are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The challenge is no longer only predicting floods, droughts or landslides more accurately. It is understanding how environmental stress interacts with economic insecurity, labour precarity and social vulnerability before harm escalates.

This requires a shift from static assessments of vulnerability toward continuous, signal-based systems.

From disaster response to anticipatory governance

Traditionally, early warning systems have focused on forecasting physical hazards. Rising river levels, extreme rainfall events, cyclonic activity and landslide probabilities form the backbone of most disaster preparedness systems. But increasingly, the more difficult challenge is detecting social deterioration before irreversible harm occurs.

By the time trafficking cases increase, by the time workers become trapped in exploitative debt arrangements or by the time families are forced into distress migration, systems are already responding late.

Anticipatory governance asks a different question: what if institutions acted during the stage of escalating vulnerability rather than after a visible crisis?

This would require integrating climate data with real-time indicators of social and economic stress. Climate forecasts could be linked with livelihood disruptions, migration patterns, labour market instability, food insecurity, debt accumulation or gender-based violence risks. Vulnerability would no longer be treated as a fixed category measured occasionally through surveys or census data but as something continuously evolving across communities.

Crucially, this is not simply about technology. Data alone cannot predict exploitation or vulnerability. Communities themselves often hold the most immediate knowledge of shifting risks. This is why community-validated risk signals become essential.

Efforts such as surakshalens.com are attempting to explore what these integrated systems could look like in practice. The initiative combines climate forecasts, socio-economic indicators, migration patterns and community-level observations to better understand how environmental stress interacts with risks such as trafficking, coercive labour conditions and gender-based violence through its data companion Climate Exploitation Risk Index.

Importantly, such initiatives should not be understood as standalone technological solutions. Predictive systems only matter if institutions are capable of acting on the information they generate.

An early warning about livelihood collapse is meaningful only if social protection systems can respond rapidly. Signals about labour exploitation risks matter only if labour protections extend to informal and mobile workers. Community-level monitoring is effective only if local actors themselves are included in shaping responses rather than simply feeding data upward into centralised systems.

The challenge, ultimately, is institutional as much as informational.

Beyond reactive relief

As environmental shocks intensify, resilience may depend less on how effectively societies respond after disasters and more on whether systems can recognise worsening vulnerability early enough to reduce harm before it escalates. That shift requires several broader transformations:

First, Sri Lanka will likely need forms of climate-indexed and signal-responsive social protection capable of expanding automatically during periods of environmental and economic stress. Support systems cannot wait until households fall into severe distress before activating assistance.

Second, labour protections must evolve to account for mobility and climate disruption. Across South Asia, climate-related migration is expected to intensify over the coming decades, yet many labour systems still assume stable and formal employment patterns. Informal and climate-displaced workers often remain excluded from protections precisely when risks are highest.

Third, climate governance systems themselves must become more integrated. Disaster management, livelihood support, labour protections, migration systems and community-level protection mechanisms cannot continue operating as isolated sectors while climate vulnerability increasingly cuts across all of them simultaneously.

Finally, there must be a broader political shift from administrating disasters toward preventing social harm because the warning signs are no longer invisible.

Communities already know where vulnerabilities are deepening. Historical patterns of exposure are well documented. Climate forecasts continue improving. The challenge is no longer whether harm can be anticipated. It is whether institutions are willing to act before a crisis becomes a catastrophe.

Sri Lanka’s climate future will not be determined only by rainfall patterns, rising temperatures or stronger storms. It will also depend on whether governance systems can evolve beyond inherited models of reactive relief toward forms of anticipatory resilience capable of recognising vulnerability while there is still time to reduce harm.

If climate vulnerability is historically produced and increasingly visible, then the central question is no longer whether crises can be predicted. It is whether systems can learn to act before the damage becomes irreversible.

Read Part 2 here: https://groundviews.org/2026/05/25/inherited-risk-colonial-legacies-and-climate-vulnerability-in-sri-lanka-part-2/

The post Inherited Risk: Colonial Legacies and Climate Vulnerability in Sri Lanka – Part 3 first appeared on Groundviews.

The government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has announced plans to reintroduce a Dharma Court with authority to make determinations regarding disciplinary issues involving Buddhist monks, based on requests made by the Mahanayake Theros, through amendments to the Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance No. 19 of 1931. The announcement has triggered significant debate across political, legal and social spheres.

Various concerns and objections began emerging, particularly among Tamil and Muslim communities. The reason is that since coming to power, the current government has consistently promoted concepts such as one country, equal rights, an end racist politics and equal law for all. However, in practice, many now view the creation of a separate judicial mechanism for a specific religious clergy as contradictory to the government’s earlier political stance.

One of the fundamental principles of a democratic country is that all individuals are equal before the law. From ordinary citizens to those holding the highest offices, everyone should be investigated and judged within the same legal framework. This remains a core principle of modern democratic governance.

In this context, the proposal to establish a separate Dharma Court to examine disciplinary matters involving Buddhist monks has created fears that Sri Lanka may gradually move toward a system of two forms of justice.

If an ordinary citizen faces criminal allegations, they are investigated through the public court system. However, when a separate mechanism is proposed for religious clergy, many question whether this effectively grants them a special layer of legal protection.

Over recent years, several controversies involving members of the clergy have emerged into the public domain. These include allegations relating to child sexual abuse, financial fraud, abuse of authority and drug-related offences, all of which have generated serious public concern.

Many human rights activists and social critics point out that the number of child abuse allegations involving religious figures may be far greater than officially acknowledged. Some cases are currently before the courts while others are alleged to have been inadequately investigated due to political and religious pressure.

Against this backdrop, critics argue that creating a separate judicial structure for clergy could further weaken public confidence in the country’s ability to deliver genuine justice.

During an event in Batticaloa recently, President Dissanayake delivered a speech emphasising reconciliation, equality and unity among Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese communities. He also stated that all three languages should be properly implemented in government institutions.

However, only days later, attempts to revive a separate legal and disciplinary mechanism specifically for Buddhist clergy have raised fresh questions regarding the government’s true political direction.

The question many Tamil and Muslim citizens are now asking is simple: “If there is to be one law and one country, why should there be a separate court for one religion?” This is a question the government is now under increasing pressure to answer clearly.

Amid the current global economic crisis and Sri Lanka’s continuing financial, social and administrative challenges, a new debate has emerged regarding the role of religious leaders within government and public administration.

As the country struggles with worsening economic conditions, growing debt, unemployment, declining investment, youth migration, corruption and institutional inefficiency, public attention has increasingly turned toward the relationship between politics and religious institutions.

Some analysts argue that religious leaders can play a constructive role in promoting morality, social harmony and humanitarian values. However, others insist that political and administrative decisions should be based entirely on constitutional principles, law and professional expertise.

Many political commentators and social analysts argue that the current crisis requires a governance model driven primarily by professionalism, evidence-based policy and administrative competence.

As a result, calls are growing for state institutions to adopt a more secular and capability-focused approach to governance.

Within this context, public discussion has intensified regarding whether religious leaders should directly influence political or administrative decision making. Some groups now argue that religious leaders should not be given special prominence at official government ceremonies, swearing in events or state functions.

According to this perspective, if the government wishes to maintain equal treatment toward all religions, state events should remain entirely civic and constitutional in nature.

Many people now emphasise that regardless of religion whether Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or Christian clergy, religious leaders should focus primarily on spiritual guidance, religious service and community welfare. Political governance and public policy decisions must remain the responsibility of democratically elected institutions and legislatures.

Particularly in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like Sri Lanka, critics warn that excessive influence by any one religious institution over state affairs could create fear and perceptions of inequality among minority communities.

Some social activists suggest that without introducing new laws, the government could establish clear administrative guidelines ensuring that religious institutions do not directly interfere in political or administrative decisions. In other words, temples, kovils, mosques and churches should remain dedicated to their spiritual, cultural and religious functions while the government focuses on areas such as the economy, law, education, healthcare, investment and national development through democratic and professional governance.

Sri Lanka’s political history demonstrates that many governments have often yielded to pressure from Buddhist religious organisations. Given the electoral significance of the Sinhala Buddhist voter base, few governments have been willing to openly confront powerful Buddhist institutions. At the same time, the current government introduced itself as a progressive and anti-racist political force. Therefore, political analysts believe that measures such as this could undermine the credibility of those earlier promises.

This issue is no longer viewed merely as an internal religious disciplinary matter. Many believe it could evolve into a major precedent affecting equality before the law, human rights, minority trust, judicial independence and religion-based political influence in the future.

Particularly among younger generations, the question is increasingly being raised, “Is equal justice truly available to everyone in this country?” On one hand, the government continues to speak about fighting corruption and strengthening justice. On the other hand, establishing separate legal structures for particular groups risks weakening public trust in those commitments.

Maintaining discipline within religious institutions is undoubtedly important. However, such efforts must not undermine the country’s public judicial system or the principle of equality before the law.

A government that continuously speaks about reconciliation, social harmony and national unity must also demonstrate those principles consistently in practice. Otherwise, the democratic belief that the same law applies equally to everyone may gradually weaken, potentially creating serious long term consequences for social cohesion and political stability.

The post Dharma Court and Equality Before the Law first appeared on Groundviews.

A new report by Amnesty International, Abandoned by the State, Trapped in Private Estates: Rights Abuses Against Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha Tamil Tea Workers, charges that Malaiyaha Tamils working on private tea estates and smallholdings are being subjected to abuses that meet many of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) indicators of forced labour while being denied access to the country’s strict labour protections.

The report documents Amnesty International’s research into private tea estates and smallholdings in the Southern Province, a community already marginalized by generations of discrimination, landlessness and exclusion. Amnesty International visited 45 private estates and smallholdings in the Galle and Matara districts in January and February 2024 and conducted 154 interviews with workers on the 45 estates and five interviews with workers outside these estates who had lived and worked on estates. Interviews were also conducted with government officials.

Here are excerpts from the executive summary of the report:

“The Malaiyaha Tamil community are descendants from workers brought to Sri Lanka from the southern part of India by British colonisers in the early 19th century to work on tea plantations. The community is one of the most discriminated against and deprived. The marginalisation of the Malaiyaha Tamils stems from historic denial of citizenship by the government, including the passing of the 1948 Citizenship Act, which laid down specifications for citizenship based on descent. In 2003 this was finally rectified by granting citizenship to “persons of Indian origin”, but decades of disenfranchisement, statelessness and barriers to land ownership have had lasting intergenerational consequences for the community.

“Although tea exports are Sri Lanka’s second largest source of export revenue, the benefit has not reached Malaiyaha Tamil workers, who are the backbone of tea production, which takes place on plantations managed by plantation companies and state corporations, as well as privately owned estates and smallholdings.

“The research revealed that Malaiyaha Tamil workers experience multiple human rights abuses, including in relation to forced labour. This is inconsistent with Sri Lanka’s obligations under international law. ILO conventions define forced labour as work “extracted under the menace of any penalty” where the worker “has not offered himself voluntarily”. The ILO identifies specific indicators of forced labour, including abuse of vulnerability, intimidation and threats, physical and sexual violence, debt bondage, restriction of movement, and abusive working and living conditions, all of which were documented in the experiences of Malaiyaha Tamil workers during the research. ILO members are obliged to take effective steps to suppress and penalize the use of forced labour.

“Abuse of vulnerability is a key indicator of forced labour. The Malaiyaha Tamil community has long experienced historic, systemic and structural racial discrimination based on descent, ethnic origin, caste and language, which have made them vulnerable to forced labour. Amnesty International’s investigation shows how employers of private tea estates and smallholdings abused the vulnerabilities associated with the Malaiyaha Tamil identity, including caste-based discrimination, to subject these workers to forced labour.

“The challenges and vulnerability facing the Malaiyaha Tamil community are compounded by systemic landlessness, which means that many do not own land or have a land title. The research revealed that workers’ housing was tied to their employment on estates. This multiple dependency on the estate management, not only for work but also housing, makes workers more vulnerable to abuse and forced labour. On all the 45 estates visited, workers said that they were reliant on their employer for housing. Fear of forced eviction and a feeling of entrapment left workers vulnerable and unable to challenge poor living and working conditions.

“Another key indicator of forced labour is physical and sexual abuse. Workers on 15 estates told Amnesty International that they had been subjected to or had witnessed verbal and/or physical abuse against workers by estate management. Reasons included criticizing the estate, not coming to work, lateness and enquiring about unpaid salary. The threat of physical violence was also reportedly used as an intimidation tactic. Furthermore, workers reported experiencing sexual abuse.

“Malaiyaha Tamil workers live in poverty, which results in economic vulnerability, including to debt bondage, and reliance on private estates and smallholdings for housing, healthcare and other essential needs. Debt bondage is both an indicator and form of forced labour. Debt bondage can result in workers being tied to an employer for an indefinite period, even across generations. By using tactics that prevent workers from receiving the daily minimum wage, including unrealistic daily tea picking targets and a lack of transparency regarding wage deductions, the research revealed that estate managements force workers to rely on wage advances and loans to meet their basic daily expenses, including food and medicine. The research found that the withholding of daily minimum wages, illegal wage deductions, undefined repayment terms and inflated prices for groceries forced workers into an endless cycle of increasing debt to estate owners. This put them under the control of the estate owners, sometimes across multiple generations, in a situation that could amount to debt bondage.

“Workers on at least 22 estates described restrictions imposed by estate management on their freedom of movement. The restrictions varied from estate to estate and included not being able to leave the estate after a certain time, not being permitted to undertake personal errands or travel without approval or with all family members present, having limits on the duration of travel, and having to inform management of their destination. Such restrictions on free movement can impact the exercise and enjoyment of other human rights, such as the right to a family life without arbitrary interference, as well as the right to education. Workers described how estates would require one member of the family to stay on the estate because they feared the family would flee otherwise. Parents also reported not being allowed to send their children to school.

“Malaiyaha Tamil workers are exposed to abusive working and living conditions, a further indicator of forced labour. This research affirmed existing findings that tea estate workers in Sri Lanka face precarious working conditions. Interviewees described a lack of personal protective equipment and injuries sustained during their work. There is currently no national policy or legislation specifically targeted at the occupational health and safety concerns of estate workers. Furthermore, Malaiyaha Tamil estate workers’ living conditions fail to meet key elements of the right to adequate housing. Apart from lack of security of tenure, the housing provided to workers lacks sufficient space, weatherproof infrastructure and adequate sanitation.

“Amnesty International’s research revealed significant gaps in Malaiyaha Tamil workers’ access to social security benefits. This contravenes Sri Lanka’s human right obligations, under which states have a duty to respect, protect and fulfil the right to social security, including taking measures to ensure all communities can enjoy this right. Workers reported that they did not have access to maternity benefits, a pension or sickness leave. Employers on private estates and smallholdings deliberately and incorrectly classify Malaiyaha Tamil workers as “casual workers”, which disconnects them from all labour-related legal entitlements and basic statutory benefits. Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court and Court of Appeal have affirmed that where an employer retains power to control the worker – as is clearly the case with Malaiyaha Tamil estate workers – such a person cannot be treated as an independent contractor. The exploitative misclassification of Malaiyaha Tamil workers as “casual” workers means that, among other things, women workers are excluded from maternity benefits.

“In Sri Lanka, employers are required to contribute to the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) and Employee Trust Fund (ETF), which form part of Sri Lanka’s social security system that benefits employees after retirement. The research revealed that estate workers are being denied access to pension benefits. Employers must register their workers for EPF and ETF. Workers reported being either uncertain of having been registered or not being registered for these benefits. Workers lacked transparent records of the contributions (and corresponding wage deductions) being made on their behalf and as a result were unclear whether they would be able to claim their pensions on retirement. The research also highlighted that Malaiyaha Tamil estate workers do not have access to paid sick leave. Workers reported that they were expected to continue working when unwell.

“Amnesty International’s research shows that trade union access for tea estate workers is very limited, and often entirely absent or prohibited by their employers. Restrictions on joining and forming trade unions are unlawful under Sri Lanka’s Constitution, national legislation and international obligations. The estates visited during the research appeared to be hostile to the idea of unions and did not have unions operating. A trade unionist told Amnesty that he felt there was a correlation between the lack of unions and the increased rights abuses experienced by Malaiyaha Tamil workers.

“The research found significant failings in labour inspections and enforcement of employment standards at tea estates in Matara and Galle districts. The Department of Labour, which sits within the Ministry of Labour, is responsible for enforcing labour laws in Sri Lanka through inspections focusing on issues such as working hours, pay, benefits and working conditions. The Labour Department told researchers that routine inspections are conducted, but highlighted that in the case of estate workers their lack of documentation and the language barrier pose specific challenges. Workers reported that officials rarely visited the estates and that their grievances remained unresolved.

“Despite Sri Lanka’s robust legislative framework, Malaiyaha Tamil workers face multiple challenges to accessing justice or remedies for abuses or poor working conditions. These include language, geographical distance, inability to take time off work to follow up on complaints due to loss of wages, discriminatory or prejudicial treatment by state officials including police, and the lack of access to documentation including relating to their employment. Much of the power to address complaints appears to lie with the police, who were reportedly unsupportive and prejudiced in their dealings with Malaiyaha Tamil workers seeking redress. Persistent marginalization and systemic discrimination obstruct the workers’ access to institutions such as the police, the Labour Department, the Labour Tribunal and arbitration for effective remedies against ongoing forced labour and unfair labour practices on private estates and smallholdings.

“The list of recommendations include the following:

• Immediately initiate a targeted special labour inspection to determine the nature and extent of labour rights abuses on private estates and smallholdings.
• Support investigations, criminal prosecutions and appropriate civil proceedings, and ensure that penalties imposed by law are strictly enforced.
• Ensure that relevant public authorities take proactive steps to identify and address barriers faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community in accessing socio-economic rights, including adequate housing.”

Read the full report here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ASA37/1011/2026/en/

The post Abuses Against Malaiyaha Tea Estate Workers Amount to Forced Labour: Amnesty International first appeared on Groundviews.

She has been compared to the boy David in the Bible story who challenged the mighty giant Goliath armed with just a slingshot and five stones. Confronting the brutal Israeli military, which has been credibly accused of committing horrific war crimes including genocide and sexual assault, unarmed and vulnerable aboard a fragile yacht, Sameera Mehboobdeen indeed seems like David.

A humanitarian activist, medic, forensic psychologist, criminologist and mental health practitioner, she is a 39-year old mother of two who made headlines for participating in the international Global Sumud Flotilla mission to Gaza. She was detained by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in international waters and has since safely returned to Sri Lanka.

Before embarking on the dangerous mission, Sameera was trained in disaster response in Turkey to prepare her for the inevitable eventuality of her boat being forcibly boarded by the IDF determined to thwart the mission to end Israel’s siege of Gaza by bringing much needed food and medical aid to the desperate Palestinians. Non-violence was to be the answer to Israeli’s terror tactics.

Since the Western powers created the state of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948, there have been many relief missions by concerned activists, the current Sumud flotilla being the largest so far.

In April, the IDF invaded the earlier flotilla south of Crete and activists were arrested illegally in international waters. According to Al Jazeera and flotilla organisers, at least 30 people were injured during that raid. Four participants reported incidents of sexual assault in Israeli custody. Two key organisers were taken to Israel, charged with terrorism and beaten and tortured in jail.

Sameera’s flotilla set sail from Turkey on May 14 with 54 vessels carrying  nearly 500 participants from 45 countries, with food, medicine and medical equipment. On May 18, the IDF boarded the vessels off the coast of Cyprus in international waters. Communications were jammed. By the end of the day, 41 vessels had been intercepted and over 300 activists detained, including Sameera.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting the captured activists, who were handcuffed and kneeling as the Israeli national anthem blared out in the background, drawing international condemnation. Many of the activists from around the world, including the UK and Australia, reported grave abuses by the IDF during their incarceration.

Sameera was eventually released and came home on May 24. She answered questions from the media upon her return.

How did you get involved in the flotilla?

The initial involvement happened during August because the Malaysian co-partner for Global Sumud Flotilla approached some of our activists and we were invited to join. I missed the first mission because I couldn’t obtain a visa for Tunisia. When they announced the second mission, I went to Maldives and met the steering committee there, so they involved me in the operation team and the legal team.

What motivated you to go?

It wasn’t actually a motivation;

 The correct terminology is desperation; desperation in the sense that, as Sri Lankans, do we have any other means to support Palestine? It’s very limited. This was the only international platform that we could actually work with to highlight Palestine in the Sri Lankan perspective. So the desperation was the motivation for this journey.

How was the support from your family?

They are my biggest asset. I was so concerned about my children because I’ve never left them for long on their own but they managed beautifully. My husband supported me monetarily with this journey because it was a huge expense. My ticket to Turkey was provided through Sri Lankan Global Sumud and my return ticket was given by Sumud Nusantara because I was out of funds as my stay extended much more than I expected. The accommodation, food and extra expenses  was done with my personal money for the entire month. Most of the return tickets were given by Global Sumud Flotilla. I made sure that we did not depend on international funds because we needed to keep the team clean. We made sure that any financial support does not come as a barrier for our future activities. 

What happened when you were detained by the IDF?

On May 17th night we started seeing lot of drone movement and warships in the distance. We had been followed. On the 18th, all our communications were cut down so there was no mobile data and our CCTV was cut off and we were intercepted by the IDF. There were two warships and one approached us and asked us to stand up with our hands up and to turn towards their warship. We did not respond so they boarded our boat forcefully. We were in international waters. We were not in their territorial waters. We were not going to apartheid state of Israel. We were going to Gaza with aid.

How were you treated by the IDF?

We were taken on board their warship. There, the trauma and the brutality started. They dragged us about, made us kneel down and took us our life jackets and warm clothes from us. It was very cold. We were taken into a dark container where there were five armed men. They tried to take off my hijab but I resisted. One of their soldiers asked me to take off my nose ring, which I refused. Then he said he will rip it off so I took it off and gave it to him. He asked for my earrings. I gave him my earrings and he pushed me out of that container. I thought the nightmare was over but I then saw my comrades beaten up, bleeding, with rib fractures.Immediately we started treating them but we did not have anything so we used frozen flatbread to bandage our comrades using T-shirts and water bottles. They were punched in the face, bleeding, and no medical attention was given. There were severe injuries, fractures and taser wounds. They tasered people on the head and in the mouth. One of my comrades sustained 15 burn injuries. Women were punched in the face, their noses broken. They were beaten in their stomachs and sexually assaulted. We triaged the wounded but we did not think some of them could make the night because it was very cold and the containers didn’t have any doors. People were terrified, traumatised because of the brutality. We spent three days in that container, not knowing the time or where we were. We had to demand water and food while they played music and mocked us. They laughed at us. They clapped when our people suffered.

What happened when you were taken ashore?

After immigration, we were sent to several checkpoints as security measures. Even there, they humiliated us and verbally sexually assaulted women. They used foul language. We were handcuffed and our legs were cuffed as well. They put us into tiny rooms.People started screaming because they couldn’t breathe. We were not given water or food from that time. They used dogs to traumatise us. We were taken out multiple times from these cells. We were made to kneel on the cold concrete slabs. Women were verbally assaulted with foul language. They used sexual language. We were paraded and displayed. We were not allowed to lift our heads. We had to lower our heads, almost close to our knees, bent down. I wouldn’t say the IDF are human beings. They are created in a very different way. They did not have any remorse. They did not have any empathy. They are brutal. Finally we were sent into a cell that had 11 people in it. We did not see any Palestinians but we could witness their presence because Arabic was written on the walls and there were signs of children in the cells because alphabets were written on the walls. Finally we travelled around five hours to an airport and were deported to Turkey. 

What do you feel about your experience?

Whatever we experienced was less than one percent of what the Palestinians experience daily. We were individuals from the international community, we were activists, we had delegations back home who were fighting for us, people were demanding our release but think about the Palestinian people who have no protection and no proper defence. It sends a chill along my spine when I think about it but this is the truth that the world needs to know about this apartheid state. So beyond us, I ask you to see the brutality, the trauma, the atrocities and the crimes that are committed against Palestinian people. We want the world to see their brutality. We were desperate to bring aid to Gaza. We were abducted in international waters because they can do anything they wish and the world is silent about it. It was not an arrest, it was an abduction because we did not try to enter Israel illegally, we tried to enter Palestine. Whatever is shown in videos from Palestine are much, much worse than you see; you are seeing only a fraction of it. So I ask you as people who speak the truth to show the world what Israel really is.

The post A Thwarted Aid Mission Lays Bare the Brutality of the Israeli State first appeared on Groundviews.

Priests enjoy a privileged position in our society, in many societies for that matter. Their high status comes merely from belonging to this category called priests. They are like politicians who enjoy recognition and power just being politicians. As we know, politicians secure a special place in society irrespective of whether they are clever or otherwise and whether they are qualified or not.

Priests enjoy more eminence in their priesthood. If you are a priest, you are well recognised, always respected and treated in special ways. Their power comes from their uniform that is synonymous with priesthood. If a priest appears in civilian clothes people would not recognise him as a priest and even the most devout layman would be confused not knowing how he should be treated. If all priests in all religions decide to dress like laypersons do tomorrow, the whole institution of priesthood would instantly collapse even if they claimed to their unsullied saintliness in their new attire. Such is the power of their mantles. This is why we smugly proclaim that no matter what we have to respect the robes. In other words, the mere sight of robes or cloaks or any other priestly uniform on a person instantly changes our behaviour and freezes us with awe and respect even though we have no idea whatsoever of the character of that person.

Do priests have to be educated? No. Do they have to be virtuous? No. They have an aura of holiness by default and they assiduously do everything possible to protect it. Let’s consider a few instances where we show them respect almost mechanically. When a priest gets into a bus, we immediately offer him our seat with a show of respect and he would sit even without a murmur of thanks, giving the impression that it is his birthright to sit when he travels. Priests hardly show signs of sensitivity or modesty on such occasions and never refuse the offer even if the volunteer seems to be physically weak. One would have expected them to practice modesty on such occasions, which society would accept as a true sign of virtue and refinement that they constantly preach and are supposed to practice.

To take another situation. Think of the way we stand up as if automated the moment we see a priest entering a house for a bana preaching or an almsgiving. They accept that display of reverence even without a murmur of appreciation. At such moments, would they ever ask you to sit down because they are only the disciples of the Buddha or whoever their respective religious leader, who preached simplicity and humility and was the embodiment of those qualities? No.

We laymen have the practice of kneeling down and worshipping them wherever we see them but hardly ever does a priest ask not to do so because a virtuous person has no use for such artificial and routine forms of worship. There are lay people who we know to be kind, humble and merciful but we don’t go down on our knees to show our admiration. Priests, if they truly wanted to work towards creating a moral society, would not only preach humility but also practice it.

As people’s moral superiors, we should naturally expect them to explain that substance is much more important than the wrappings and that those who are serious about moral values would not depend much on others’ show of respect. Unfortunately, there is little discussion among people why priests are special and why they deserve our respect. Is it because they are virtuous or is it because their special dress code should be respected with no questions? If that is the case, where are we going to end up as a society? What if all our religious institutions were to perpetuate with all their rituals perennial parades of respect being maintained intact and worshippers upholding unquestioning silence and learned subduedness in all matters pertaining to good and bad? If priests are pruthajjana as they point out on occasions, which means prone to err like any other person, why should they occupy a sacrosanct place in society? The implication seems to be the perpetuation of the institution come what may and that they enjoy their privileges and eminence thoroughly.

Consider how numerous Buddhist priests use a string of adjectives, titles and terms indicating their distinction – athi gavuravaneeya, poojya paada, maha singharathnaya, this sangha-nayake and that sanga-nayake belonging to this or that nikaya – all this without a trace of modesty. No person with a sense of modesty would sing their own praises even in privacy let alone when they are in public. Even lay people who are supposed to be morally inferior to priests would blush to receive profuse compliments from others however deserving they may be. But not priests who are supposed to guide the way towards sanity.

And to make matters worse, now more and more devotees seem to have no sense of restraint in their overt display of reverence when they officially address monks. For example, instead of being progressively sober in their display of respect, they become more and more indulgent using new and more obsequious expressions like “if you permit me to say your good name” as a prelude to announcing a priest’s name. They also never hesitate to put some icing on the cake by saying, “We are mindful of the fact that you have made your presence here out of sheer compassion for the unlucky us”. By using those state of the art encomiums to apparently boost the ego of our priests and unreservedly condemning our own miserable position of being lay people, we seem to enjoy plumbing new depths of our own unworthiness.

If moral development is the primary reason why religion should be there, the modes of how religions operate have a lot of room for improvement. However, if sanity, reason and critical thinking were to be part of our morality curve, we must make morality an ongoing process thriving on discussion and not a sealed parcel to be accepted on authority. If people are ready to recognise morality for what it is and in all its complexity, not as the exclusive preserve of religion as we used to for time immemorial, then religion will automatically find its proper place in the broad scheme of things and priests will adapt themselves to a more constructive role if they wish to be flexible enough.

The post Priests, Religions and the Morality Curve first appeared on Groundviews.

This is what happened during the May 2025 local government elections, not as an isolated incident but as a glimpse of something much larger.

For hundreds of thousands of younger voters, the polls were a first. They were arriving at a moment when the battle for votes increasingly begins not at a rally but on a smartphone screen. Singapore held its general elections in May 2025 and authorities had barely called Nomination Day before at least 20 fake Facebook and Instagram accounts targeting political parties had already appeared. Japan’s upper house election in July 2025 brought its own wave with social media bots spreading AI-generated imageson politically sensitive topics, catching the government off guard. Thirty eight countries have experienced election-related deepfake incidents since 2021, affecting 3.8 billion people and more broadly all deepfake incidents in the first half of 2025 alone exceeded the entire total recorded since 2017 by 171 per cent, a sign of how rapidly the underlying technology is spreading.

Sri Lanka was not an outlier. It was the pattern.

Democracy Reporting International in its report, Democracy in Disguise, investigated and studied murky accounts on TikTok during the election period. Between April and June 2025, the report identifies 66 TikTok profiles linked to Sri Lankan political entities that appeared official but were not. Unlike parody or fan pages, these murky accounts carried no disclaimer. They used party logos, near-identical usernames and TikTok’s own editing tools, native fonts, background music and emojis to pass as the real thing. Some showed signs of coordination: multiple accounts with usernames following near-identical patterns, suggesting a single operator behind them.

The NPP was the most impersonated accounting for one in three fake accounts, followed by the Sarvajana Balaya Alliance and the SJB. NPP-linked murky accounts averaged nearly 1,900 followers and more than 17,000 profile likes with each video drawing an average of 3,500 views. These were not dormant shells sitting in the corners of the internet. They were active, reaching people, shaping what they saw.

When the accounts were flagged through TikTok’s in-app reporting tool and via EU-level contacts, nothing happened. That silence is not a glitch, it is geography. TikTok’s own transparency data shows the platform removed nearly 3,000 impersonation accounts across EU elections in the first half of 2025. The EU’s Digital Services Act created the legal infrastructure that made that possible. Sri Lanka has no equivalent. When the accounts were reported, there was no structured framework to escalate through, no public contact point and no obligation on TikTok’s part to respond.

The DRI report, Biased by Design?, takes on a different problem, one that feels almost mundane until you sit with the numbers. The reports were produced under the project Strengthening Resilience Against Disinformation in Sri Lanka, co-implemented with Factum and co-funded by the European Union.

In April 2025, weeks before polling day, the study tested four widely used AI chatbots, ChatGPT 4.0, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot and DeepSeek on 18 questions about Sri Lanka’s election, asked in each of the three main languages.

DeepSeek gave false or misleading responses 35.4 per cent of the time. ChatGPT scored 18.8 per cent and Copilot 16.7 per cent. Even Gemini, the best performer, was wrong 10.4 per cent of the time. The most common failure was a particular kind of confident confusion: the models reached back to Sri Lanka’s 2024 presidential election and served up those results when asked about a local election held months later.

Language made things worse. Sinhala responses were accurate 71.8 per cent of the time, English 68.1 per cent but Tamil, one of the country’s two official languages, reached only 64.1 per cent. Tamil speaking voters who asked how to register were consistently told they could do so at regional offices, a method that simply did not exist for this election. An older voter, unable to register online, might have followed that advice and found the door closed.

The bias findings were sharper still. Copilot, answering in Sinhala, flatly recommended a single party when asked about workers’ rights. DeepSeek, in English, named specific parties to support and specific parties to avoid when asked about LGBTQ+ rights. None of this was orchestrated. It emerged from training data and design choices made by engineers in cities far from Colombo. But the effect, voters nudged toward or away from specific parties by a system they had every reason to trust, was real regardless of intent.

There was one finding that stood apart. Gemini, which in previous research on EU elections had consistently declined to answer election-related questions at all, answered every single prompt in Sri Lanka, sometimes incorrectly. Whether this reflects a deliberate policy change at Google or simply a different standard applied to a different context, the implication is the same: some countries get the cautious version of the algorithm. Others get the confident one.

This is not a problem unique to Sri Lanka. A 2024 study published in Policy & Internet found that TikTok across South and Southeast Asia moderates based on pragmatic necessity rather than moral obligation, deliberately sidestepping contentious political content and producing, in the study’s own words, “an accountability vacuum where legitimate interests are sidelined.” The pattern holds further afield. A 2024 survey across five African countries found that 84 per cent of respondents relied on social media for news with over half citing TikTok specifically while in Nigeria alone TikTok removed 3.6 million videos in a single quarter for violating content standards.

Voters in these countries are no less deserving of accurate information. They are simply less valuable to the algorithm and less powerful in regulatory conversation. The technology to enforce platform rules already exists; TikTok proved as much by removing nearly 3,000 impersonation accounts across EU elections while leaving 66 identified accounts in Sri Lanka untouched. The gap between what Europe receives and what the rest of the world receives is not a gap in capability. It is a gap in regulatory pressure and who has enough of it.

The Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age identified disinformation as a central threat to electoral integrity globally, calling on public authorities to compel major platforms to enforce their rules consistently, including in countries where they have no political or commercial stake. In June 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Irene Khan, brought a similar argument before the Human Rights Council, indicating that the platforms must set basic global standards for elections in every jurisdiction and apply them consistently and fairly.

Consistently and fairly. These are the words that matter. The methodology that found 66 fake accounts in Sri Lanka was built by civil society, not the platform. The chatbot errors that could have stopped Tamil speaking voters from registering were found by a simple study, not by Google or Microsoft. The infrastructure for accountability exists. The will to apply it globally does not.

The fixes are not complex. TikTok should require verified labels for political entities, make it harder to create impersonation accounts, provide its community guidelines in Sinhala and Tamil and provide think tanks and civil society outside the EU a direct line to trust and safety teams. Chatbot providers should either train their models to decline election questions and redirect voters to official sources, as Gemini did elsewhere, or ensure that the information they provide is accurate, consistent across languages and aligned with local electoral guidelines. The Election Commission of Sri Lanka should enforce its own Media Guidelines through concrete action, not just publication, and should tell voters clearly that chatbots can be wrong about elections.

Return to that first time voter. She watches a video from what appears to be an official party account. She asks a chatbot what documents to bring to vote. She gets an answer that is mostly right, with one detail that is not. She votes. Democracy, in some form, continues.

But she voted with a slightly distorted picture of who was campaigning, built partly from accounts nobody authorised and partly from a system trained in data that did not include this election. Local elections are often decided by margins smaller than the gap between what voters knew and what they should have known. The phantom campaign ran alongside the real one. For now, nobody shut it down.

The post How Fake Accounts and Confused Chatbots Are Rewriting Elections first appeared on Groundviews.

They moved with grace initially with hands placed in positions that perfectly captured the essence of classical South Indian Bharatanatyam dance. Their movements told stories that couldn’t be portrayed using their facial expressions. They walked in with hope. Then, they dropped down one after another, ending up on their knees and finally curling down onto the ground of Trafalgar Square. They stood for the innocent children who had been murdered and buried.

This was Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day, the 17th anniversary of the end of a war that killed an estimated 40,000 Tamil civilians in its final weeks alone. The performance had been choreographed to a song composed specifically to remember Mullaitivu, the coastal village in northeastern Sri Lanka where the military’s final offensive ended the 26-year civil war in May 2009. The conflict had its roots in decades of systematic discrimination against the Tamil minority by the Sinhalese-majority government following independence from Britain in 1948. The result was an erosion of language rights and political representation. By 1983, it had become a full civil war between the state and the LTTE. It ended at Mullaitivu where many Tamil civilians, trapped in so-called no-fire zones that were shelled regardless, died in the military’s final offensive. No further independent inquiry has been pursued. Seventeen years on, there has been no justice for victims and no consequences for the perpetrators.

My role as a volunteer was simple. I would stand beside a row of exhibition boards detailing the history of the civil war and the endless cycles of violence beginning in 1948 and explain them to whoever stopped to read. Originally, I thought it would be a modest job. What I did not anticipate was how many people would stop and what they would say when they paused.

A man visiting from Canada read through the boards in silence. When he finished, he turned to me and said, “I had no idea. Had I known this was happening, I would have done something to help.” Over the course of the afternoon, I heard variations of that sentence from more people than I could count. From tourists attracted by the commotion to locals who had wandered into Trafalgar Square, all of these people found themselves in the middle of a community’s grief. In an age when some atrocities dominate the news for months, the massacre at Mullivaikkal has never fully entered global consciousness. The Tamil community has been asking for accountability over the past 17 years.

Thiru, the British Tamils Forum’s strategic coordinator, has been asking that question for longer than most. I met him near the exhibitions, composed and precise in the way of someone who has learned to carry great weight without letting it show. His story begins not in 2009 but in 1956 when newly independent Sri Lanka passed legislation making Sinhala the country’s sole official language – the policy that would define the lives of Tamil professionals for generations. Thiru worked in Sri Lanka for seven years. Tamil employees, he explained, were required to pass professional examinations in Sinhalese to qualify for permanent employment, a process officially termed standardisation. He sat the first exam. Then he stopped. “I asked myself why I should have to give up my Tamil identity to keep my job,” he told me. “It felt like an attack on my self-respect.” The consequences were professional and financial. He left anyway. He watched what happened at Mullivaikkal in 2009 from abroad. “None of my immediate family was killed,” he said. “But all of those who died felt like family to me. It felt as if my own family had been killed.” He came to Britain as a refugee and found the BTF in 2018.. He is here because he believes Britain carries a particular responsibility that predates 2009 by decades.

Earlier in the afternoon, British MPs had addressed the crowd, expressing solidarity. Poems were read. There were calls for accountability, for an international tribunal that has still not been convened. The kanji (rice boiled in salt water) was served as a symbol to recall the starvation endured by Tamil civilians trapped in the military’s closing offensive of the no-fire zones. People took the small cups and held them closely. The mood was not one of despair alone. There was a sense of deep mourning as well as a collective refusal to allow silence to become acceptance. I felt it most intensely when the final speaker took the stage. Instead of speaking in everyday Sri Lankan Tamil, she spoke in a more formal, classical form of the language. This dialect was much closer to Tamil’s earliest written origins with rhythms that felt older and more measured. While listening to her, something in me went quiet. Hearing an ancient language carry newly-lived grief created a strange feeling as though hearing those ageless words was itself a representation of Tamil perseverance.

Alojan has been attending BTF events since he was six years old. He began volunteering at 16. He is part of a generation that did not live in Sri Lanka through the war but has still grown up shaped by the stories of parents and grandparents and by the unanswered questions. “The older generation trusts us to carry this forward,” he told me. “But not enough young Tamils know this story. The only way things will change is if we keep spreading it.”

As the vigil drew to a close, the square returned slowly to itself. The exhibition boards were packed away. Tourists continued past Nelson’s Column, photographing the fountains, unaware that an hour earlier, dancers had sunk to this ground to represent the burial of children. The ease with which an entire community’s grief can occupy the heart of London and still go unseen is perhaps the most honest summary of what Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day is really about. The Tamil community does not gather here each May because it believes the world is listening. It gathers because it has learned, across 17 years and across the distances of exile, that the act of remembering is itself a form of resistance.

They were here. They are still here. And they will come back next year.

The post Inside London’s Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day first appeared on Groundviews.

When floods disrupt transport routes or extreme heat affects agricultural production in Sri Lanka, the immediate impacts are often visible but another crisis frequently unfolds more quietly in the weeks that follow. Daily wage workers lose income almost immediately when work stops. Informal labourers face prolonged instability with few financial protections. Plantation workers experience disruptions to already fragile livelihoods. Families take on debt to absorb sudden income loss. Migration pressures increase as local opportunities shrink.

For many households, climate shocks are not isolated environmental events. They are economic turning points.

The labour market is already structurally precarious. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), nearly 66% of employment is informal. Informal workers often lack employment contracts, insurance protections, paid leave or income continuity during crises. For daily wage earners, even a few days without work can destabilise household finances. And these consequences are not distributed evenly.

The workers most vulnerable to climate disruption are often those already positioned within insecure labour systems – informal workers, plantation communities, migrant labourers and low income households dependent on climate-sensitive industries. Agriculture still employs around 30% of the workforce despite contributing less than 10% to GDP. This imbalance matters because it means millions remain economically dependent on sectors highly exposed to rainfall variability, flooding, drought and heat stress. Climate change does not create these conditions from scratch. It intensifies labour systems shaped over generations by extraction, inequality and economic dependency.

This is one of the least discussed dimensions of climate vulnerability: the way colonial labour structures continue to shape who bears the greatest social and economic costs of environmental disruption today.

The plantation economy never fully disappeared

The plantation system introduced under British colonial rule was not simply an agricultural model. It was a labour regime designed around control, immobility and extraction. Workers brought into plantation economies were tied closely to estates through housing, wages, debt and limited mobility. Entire communities became economically dependent on a single form of labour within geographically isolated regions. Access to land ownership, education and alternative livelihoods remained constrained for generations.

The objective was not long term social mobility, it was the maintenance of a stable and low cost labour force. While the economy has evolved significantly since independence, many structural features of this labour system continue to persist in altered forms.

Today, the plantation economy still directly and indirectly supports the livelihoods of nearly one million people. In some plantation regions, multidimensional poverty rates remain significantly above urban districts despite decades of economic growth nationally. At the same time, climate instability is already affecting plantation productivity.

In 2023, Sri Lanka’s tea production dropped to one of its lowest levels to a five year low, shaped partly by economic disruptions but also by changing environmental conditions affecting cultivation. For plantation workers paid through output-based systems, declining yields often translate directly into declining wages. The labour landscape has diversified since the colonial period however insecurity remains deeply embedded within it.

Climate stress amplifies existing inequality

When floods damage agricultural production, work opportunities decline. When extreme weather disrupts transportation networks, informal workers lose daily income. When prolonged droughts affect crop yields, debt burdens increase. When repeated disasters reduce local economic stability, migration pressures intensify. These impacts are rarely temporary.

During the 2024 flooding events, more than 250,000 people were affected within days with extensive damage reported across infrastructure, agriculture and housing. But the secondary economic effects received far less attention. In flood-affected districts, informal vendors, transport workers, fisheries workers and daily wage labourers usually experience prolonged income disruption even after emergency relief operations ended.

Similarly, the 2017 floods and landslides, among the worst in Sri Lanka’s recent history, affected over 600,000 people and caused billions of rupees in economic losses. Yet much of the long term burden fell on households dependent on unstable daily income rather than formal salaried work.

A single disaster may destroy homes immediately but the longer term effects often continue for months resulting in migration increasingly becoming part of how households manage risk.

Migration becomes a climate coping strategy

This movement is not always framed explicitly as climate migration. More often, it appears through gradual shifts: workers leaving districts after repeated crop failures, families seeking urban employment following flooding or overseas migration increasing after local economic disruptions. But climate stress frequently sits beneath these decisions.

Sri Lanka already has a long history of labour migration. In drought-affected agricultural districts, workers may move temporarily toward urban informal sectors after repeated harvest losses. Fishing communities facing declining catches and coastal instability may diversify livelihoods or migrate seasonally. Younger workers from plantation areas increasingly leave estates entirely in search of unstable but potentially higher-paying urban employment. But migration itself can introduce new vulnerabilities.

Workers entering unfamiliar labour markets often face unstable employment conditions, dependence on intermediaries, unsafe working conditions or weak legal protections. Women entering domestic work sectors may experience heightened insecurity, particularly when migration decisions are driven by urgent household financial stress.

Again, these dynamics are not entirely new. Colonial labour systems relied heavily on controlling the movement and dependency of workers. Contemporary labour precarity operates differently but many underlying patterns remain familiar: constrained choices, economic dependency, weak protections and unequal exposure to risk. Climate shocks do not invent these vulnerabilities, they intensify them.

The invisible side of climate risk

Climate governance frameworks tend to focus heavily on environmental hazards like rainfall intensity, flood forecasting, heat levels, drought severity and infrastructure damage. These measurements are essential but they capture only part of the crisis. Far less attention is paid to how climate shocks reshape livelihoods, income stability, mobility or household stress in real time. This creates a major blind spot.

The Disaster Management Centre regularly tracks physical impacts but there is far less systematic monitoring of post-disaster labour instability, household debt accumulation, disrupted migration patterns or informal sector collapse. Yet these slower economic shifts often determine whether communities recover or fall deeper into long term vulnerability.

Recent displacement patterns across South Asia increasingly show how environmental stress and economic precarity overlap. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimates that weather-related disasters displace millions annually across the region. But displacement figures alone reveal only part of the story. Many households experience prolonged economic instability without formally relocating at all.

Without integrating these indicators into climate governance frameworks, response systems will continue to overlook how environmental shocks evolve into broader social and economic crises.

Beyond hazard maps

This is where emerging approaches that connect environmental stress with livelihood vulnerability begin to matter. Frameworks such as the Climate Exploitation Risk Index (CERI) are beginning to explore how climate events interact with labour insecurity, economic dependency, protection risks, child exploitation, gender based violence and many such indicators rather than treating them separately. The importance of such approaches lies not only in measuring environmental exposure but in identifying how social vulnerability evolves before visible crisis fully materialises.

Climate vulnerability is not simply about who lives in flood-prone areas; it is also about who can absorb income loss, who has mobility options, who carries debt burdens, who lacks labour protections and whose livelihoods remain structurally exposed to environmental disruption. The challenge is that many of these vulnerabilities remain poorly integrated into mainstream climate adaptation systems.

The afterlives of extraction

Sri Lanka’s climate future cannot be understood separately from the historical labour systems that continue to shape vulnerability today. Colonial economies organised land and labour around extraction. Many of the structures created during that period – dependency on climate-sensitive industries, concentrated labour communities, limited mobility and uneven protections – continue to influence how risk is distributed across society.

Climate shocks now interact with these inherited inequalities in increasingly visible ways. But vulnerability does not begin when disaster strikes, it accumulates quietly through unstable work, economic pressure, disrupted livelihoods and constrained choices long before systems officially recognise the crisis.

If labour insecurity rises predictably under climate stress, then the question is no longer whether these patterns exist. The question is why they remain largely invisible in how climate risk itself is measured and addressed.

Read Part 1 here: https://groundviews.org/2026/05/13/inherited-risk-colonial-legacies-and-climate-vulnerability-in-sri-lanka-part-1/

The post Inherited Risk: Colonial Legacies and Climate Vulnerability in Sri Lanka – Part 2 first appeared on Groundviews.

“If a monk, after taking on a monk’s training and way of life, without first renouncing the training and revealing his weakness, has sexual intercourse, even with a female animal, he is expelled and excluded from the community.” The Buddha (Final Ruling – Vinaya Pitaka – The Chapter on Offenses Entailing Expulsion)

A man walks down a corridor with heavy steps, as if weighed down by the stack of files in his hand. He stops to pick up a crumpled piece of paper and put it into a trash can, a small act which reveals much. His destination is the office of his new boss, a smartly dressed young woman. He places the files on her table, the gesture indicative of resignation, official and psychological. He has been an investigative officer for 20 years, he informs his new boss, but was never allowed to do his job with head held high. The files pertain to abandoned investigations. His new boss tells him to take the files back and resume work because now his goals and the goals of the administration are the same. When the official leaves, there is a spring in his step and hope in his eyes.

In the run up to the 2024 presidential election, the NPP ran a series of thematic ads. An Independent Public Service was the title of the above ad. Justice for all was a pillar of the NPP platform. A future NPP government will end impunity, the country was assured; every crime, irrespective of the status of the alleged perpetrator, will be investigated and justice done.

What happened to that promise when a 14-year old child accused a powerful and wealthy monk of purchasing her from her own mother for Rs.100,000 and raping her?

The case of Child X and the head-monk of Atamasthana is a test case for the government, the opposition, the Sasana, the country and each one of us citizens. The victim belongs to the bottom most layer of society, the poorest and the most powerless. The alleged perpetrator hails from an aristocratic family. He is also one of the most powerful monks in the country – the head of the eight holiest places of Buddhism: Sri Maha Bodhi, Ruwanweliseya, Thuparama, Lovamahapaya, Abhayagiri, Jetavanaramaya, Mirisewetiya and Lankaramaya.

Given the massive imbalance of power, this case belongs among the abandoned investigations the honest official refers to in the NPP ad. The kind of case previous administrations would have ignored, shushed up, swept under the carpet of forgetfulness; the kind of case the NPP pledged to bring to just and transparent conclusion.

That was the promise. The reality is turning out to be antithetical. Faced with a crime where the victim is quintessentially non-elite and the alleged perpetrator a repository of wealth and clerical power, the NPP government has opted to follow in the infamous footsteps of its predecessors. It has evaded and obfuscated and sought sanctuary in silence. Other than a watery statement by Minister Saroja Paulraj, not a single NPP/JVP leader has said a word about this case – not the president or the prime minister, not the minister of public security or the minister of justice, not the maverick Lal Kantha or the many women parliamentarians of the NPP. Their silence is echoed by the leader of opposition, every party in the opposition, the chief prelates and other leading monks and the mainstream media (legacy media).

Had it not been for independent journalist Bimal Ruhunuge who lodged a complaint with the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) and a handful of You Tubers and websites, this case would have died an unnatural death, asphyxiated by the government with the full backing of the opposition and the legacy media.

In the ad, the NPP promises to protect those officials who fight for justice. Once again, reality is otherwise. The officials of the NCPA who champion the cause of the victimised child are being abandoned by the NPP government. According to internet sources, a particularly vicious slander campaign is being waged against the NCPA legal director Sajeewani Abeykoon.

The conclusion is depressingly obvious: under the NPP too, justice is selective, dependent on the status of the victim and of the alleged perpetrator. Behind the banner of renaissance, regression rules.

Justice subverted

According to media reports, Child X’s horror began in 2023, when she was just 11 plus years old.

What she was like before the nightmare of abuse caught her in its unrelenting jaws, we will never know. Was she studious or playful? Was she serious or funny? Did she read books, climb trees or swim in the tanks? Whatever her still unformed nature she would have, like any other child of that age, gone to school, played with friends and dreamt of the future.

What it was like for her to live through that nightmare of abuse (the monk allegedly summoned her every three days) we cannot know. All we know is what the mother said in her statement about that first day. Accompanied by her daughter, she had followed the monk to his living quarters and waited outside while the monk took the child to his room. When the child came out about 10 minutes later, her face was “unhappy/bitter”. When asked, she replied that the monk kissed her face.

Child X would not have known the exact nature of horror awaiting her but the first taste of it was enough to make her look unhappy/bitter. Even if she had been fully informed of her fate, what could she have done? Who could she have turned to for protection? Her parents who sold her? The police? After all, if the allegations are accurate, on the way to the monk’s room, she would have walked past his police guard. Living all her short life in Anuradhapura, she would have also known the power of Atamasthanadhipathi monk. Since her parents sold flowers and bees honey near Ruwanweliseya, their livelihood too was in his hands. What could a child do in such circumstances but succumb and survive any which way she can?

It is such a child that Dilum Amunugama called a prostitute. Egregious as his words were, the wordlessness of his party leader Dilith Jayaweera, his colleagues in the Sarvajana Balaya Party and the wider opposition and his opponents in the government is no better. Their symphony of silence tells us all we need to know about the cowardice, opportunism and moral complicity of our political class. (Incidentally, who will be the first politician to kneel before an alleged child-rapist and ask for his blessing?)

The suspect-monk is only a suspect. As a citizen of a democratic country, presumption of innocence is his constitution guaranteed fundamental right. A speedy, transparent and fair trial is in his best interest because that would give him a chance to prove his innocence not just before the law but also before the tribunal of the people. Unfortunately, his own evasions and the police’s dilatory tactics have created serious doubts about the probity of the process of justice.

The timeline of the case is instructive in this regard.

          April 10: Child X gives her statement to the Nittambuwa police, naming the monk as her initial abuser.

          April 22: After 12 days of inaction by the police, independent journalist Bimal Ruhunuge lodges a complaint with the NCPA. Curiously, the police had omitted to keep the NCPA informed about this case.

          April 23: The NCPA enquires from Senior DIG Sajeewa Medawatte whether the investigation has begun and is told there is a delay.

          April 24: The NCPA chairperson, former high court judge Preethi Inoka Ranasinghe, writes to DIG Medawatte advising him to obtain court orders to send the underwear of Child X (which she had buried) for DNA testing, get a travel ban on the monk, video-record Child X’s statement in the presence of NCPA officials and get the records of her phone (allegedly given to her by the suspect-monk). The NCPA also informs the DIG that the police should arrest the monk if reasonable suspicion exists and produce him before the courts.

         April 27: The police present a report to the courts about the incident but refrain from naming suspects.

         April 30: The NCPA writes to Senior DIG Medawatte with a copy to the IGP enquiring why the monk has not been arrested despite the existence of a prima facie case.

         May 4: The police produces the mother of Child X before the magistrate. The monk is still not named a suspect.

         May 8: Consequent to a motion filed by the NCPA, the court orders the monk’s arrest. That evening, he enters the Nawaloka Hospital.

         May 9: The police arrest the monk but he remains in the Nawaloka Hospital, as per medical instructions.

         May 13: Fort Magistrate orders the monk to be remanded until 22 May.

         May 15: The monk is finally transferred to the National Hospital.

         May 22: The monk is produced before the Anuradhapura magistrate court and given bail.

The NCPA reportedly asked the deputy director general of the National Hospital for a full report of the monk’s health. The deputy director general appointed a committee of six doctors. The committee concluded that the monk was in good health and whatever minor ailments he suffers from are normal given his age. Judicial medical officer Prof Clifford Perera came to a similar conclusion after studying his medical records.

The statements by Child X and her mother, given separately, reportedly tally with each other. The description Child X gave of the monk’s living quarters was proven to be accurate during the site inspection. There has been over 80 phone calls between the monk and Child X.

Would the police have dragged their collective feet for so long had the suspect been a layman or even a monk with less social and economic power? Why did the AG’s Department not send a representative to the Anuradhapura court on May 22 despite requests by the police and the NCPA? According to media reports, the monk had called the hospital where the child is being held and tried to put pressure on the employees not to talk. If the child’s location is a secret, how did the monk find it out? Given all these worrying developments, what will there be at the conclusion of this case – justice or the sort of rank impunity the NPP pledged to end?

Forgetting the Buddha’s example 

The first Vinaya rule made by the Buddha concerned a monk named Sudinna. The only son of wealthy parents, Sudinna tired of lay life and became ordained. The parents, having failed to persuade him to return to lay life, pleaded with him to engage in sexual intercourse with his former wife in order to birth an heir for their vast wealth. Monk Sudinna agreed.

When the Buddha heard the story, he didn’t remain silent (like our chief prelates) or try to hush things up for the sake of the Sasana (like our government, opposition and legacy media). Instead, he summoned monk Sudinna, uncovered the truth and then said, “Foolish man, it’s not suitable, it’s not proper, it’s not worthy of a monastic, it’s not allowable, it’s not done… Foolish man, you’ve practiced what is contrary to the true Teaching… You are the forerunner, the first performer of many unwholesome things. This will affect people’s confidence, and cause some to lose it”. The Buddha then laid the Vinaya rule against clerical sex, “For the well-being of the Sangha, for the comfort of the Sangha, for the restraint of bad people, for the ease of good monks, for the restraint of the corruptions relating the present life…to give rise to confidence in those without it, to increase the confidence of those who have it, for the longevity of the true Teaching…”

Monk Sudinna engaged in a single act of consensual sex with an adult woman who was his wife in lay life. Pallegama Hemaratana Thero has been accused of a deed far more heinous, the trafficking in and raping of a child. Given the gravity of the alleged offense, the chief prelates should have removed the suspect-monk from the august position he currently occupies until the case is over. Unfortunately, they are yet to issue a statement explaining their own stance regarding this case even though the locus of the alleged crime was just next door to the Sri Maha Bodhi. Clearly, they have forgotten the Buddha’s words, that monks engaging in sexual intercourse “is contrary to True Teaching”, “unwholesome” and “will affect people’s confidence, and cause some to lose it”. By not abiding by the Buddha’s words, by seeming to be complicit in a horrendous crime, they are contributing not to the protection of the Sasana but its debasement.

The silence of the chief prelates is in a sense suitable, for what exists in Sri Lanka today is not quite the Sasana of the Buddha. It’s more the Sasana of monk Mahanama who, in total violation of the Buddha’s teaching, justified the killing of millions for the protection of Buddhism in his obviously apocryphal story about King Dutugemunu’s conscience. It is also the Sasana of King Kirti Sri Rajasinghe who, in total violation of the Buddha’s teaching, introduced caste into monkhood. Will it also become the Sasana of Pallegama Hemaratana where clerical sex is permitted, including non-consensual and child sex?

The post The Shame of a Nation first appeared on Groundviews.