However, the war also represented the legacy of British imperialism. The mainstream narrative suggests that the civil war was derived from tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups. The war was mainly a clash between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) insurgent group, the latter of which had hoped to establish a separate state for the Tamil minority. Sri Lanka’s present is haunted by memories of the island’s decades-long civil war, which began in 1983 and ended just over 10 years ago. Such growing disenchantment with the Sri Lankan government represents just one problem amongst the country's history of ethnic tensions. Some footage, for instance, “showed a young woman being tossed into a police vehicle, head first.” One of the protest’s organizers, Pubudu Jayagoda, indicated that the Sri Lankan government had been “downplaying coronavirus health risks,” implying that the police perhaps had ulterior motives and revealing his disillusionment with the government’s policing power. However, the police’s ferocity was unsettling. Police arrived at the demonstration and violently dispersed protesters-arresting at least 53 individuals-supposedly to enforce public health restrictions related to the COVID-19 outbreak. As the nation attempts to heal, Sri Lanka continues to sustain new injuries to its social and political structures that reveal much larger systemic problems. The country, after all, has its history of ethnic strife and is currently mending after the end of a long, brutal civil war. Sri Lanka’s social issues also came to light at this protest. On June 9, 2020, Sri Lankans occupied the streets outside the US Embassy in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, holding signs condemning the racism, police brutality, and other maladies plaguing the United States.
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