Photo courtesy of The Times of Israel
“This isn’t just about Palestine, it’s about everyone’s right to dissent…” Clare Hinchcliffe (Middle East Eye, 20.3.2025).
Zoë Rogers is 21, English, a dog-lover. In August 2024, she, together with five others, crashed a modified prison van into Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturing facility in Bristol. The six activists, part of a collective of political prisoners known as Filton 18, are in custody awaiting trial.
Ms. Rogers worked hard and gained a university placement, according to her mother Clare Hinchcliffe. Then Gaza intervened. “She was horrified by the genocide and went on all the marches. But she could see nothing was working. (That’s why) she decided on direct action. She would rather lose her liberty and her place in uni than hear of another child’s death in Gaza…”
“When they ask me why I did it, I tell them about the children,” Ms. Rogers wrote from prison. “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brain in my hand. The first of many,” wrote Jewish-American surgeon Mark Perlmutter.
Mohammad Rusdi is 22, a Sri Lankan Muslim. Like Zoë Rogers, Mark Perlmutter and countless people across the world, he too was haunted by the carnage Gaza, especially the murder of children. Unlike Zoë Rogers, he didn’t damage any Israeli asset. He merely exercised his constitutional right to free speech by pasting a sticker on a dustbin saying F!@# Israel.
That simple act of peaceful protest was enough for the police to investigate him as a terrorism suspect, arrest him under the PTA on a 90-day detention order, play sadistic mind games with his devastated family and even demand that his 13-year-old sister be brought for questioning.
At a 2024 meeting marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Minister Bimal Ratnayake said that entire Sri Lanka stands in solidarity with Palestine. After interviewing Kokawewa Sumedha Thero and other inhabitants of the historic village of Dutuweva in Anuradhapura, Beena Sarwar and Uditha Devapriya wrote how sympathy for Palestine and for Americans students protesting against the Gaza war are present across ethno-religious line and in “the most unlikely communities in the most unlikely places” (The Sunday Island, 19.5.24). Of course there were bagatelle exceptions like Udaya Gammanpila. In recent times, a very powerful institution has joined this motely band of pro-Israelis: Sri Lankan police.
According to SJB parliamentarian Mujibur Rahman, Rusdi is not the only Muslim targeted by the police for opposing Israel. A 31-year old Muslim man in Eravur has been questioned for writing Allah will protect Palestine in a poem. In Colombo, the police went to the house of an organiser of an anti-Israel demonstration, a Muslim, looking for stickers (somebody somewhere is really prickly about those F!@# Israel stickers). Some of the questions the Colombo Crime Division reportedly asked are mind-boggling: Why do you call Netanyahu a terrorist? Why demonstrate here when Palestinian children are killed?
Ceylon established diplomatic relations with Israel in the 1950 and broke them in 1971. They were partially re-established under President J.R. Jayewardene in the 1980s and broken by President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1990s. Full diplomatic relations were established in 2000 under President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. But leaders across the political divide were openly and consistently supportive of the Palestinian cause. In 1988, Sri Lanka became one of the first countries to recognise the independent state of Palestine. In 2023, Sri Lanka under President Ranil Wickremesinghe even opposed a Canadian amendment to a UN resolution explicitly condemning Hamas. No government, however repressive, however intolerant of dissent, cracked down on pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli activism. Until now.
Why are Sri Lankan police agitated about Netanyahu being called a terrorist or about demonstrations against the Gaza genocide? Who is giving these guidelines and orders? Our police may not know about Nelson Mandela (incidentally, Mr. Mandela was removed from the US terror watch list only in 2008!) but the JVP, with its strong pro-Palestinian record, would remember his words: “Our freedom is incomplete without freedom of the Palestinians.”
Currently, the police are limiting their pro-Israeli crackdown to Muslims. But if allowed to continue, it can extend to all Sri Lankans opposing Israel’s genocide and even to dissent in general. After all, crackdown on peaceful pro-Palestinian activism is often how assaults on fundamental political freedoms begin, as Harvard discovered this month.
Resist the beginnings
In the US, they first came for pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Like so many American institutions Harvard, America’s oldest university, bent over backwards to accommodate the demands of politicians who equated peaceful opposition to the Gaza genocide with anti-Semitism.
Under President Donald Trump, political authorities are widening their suppressive dragnet to include fundamental academic freedoms. Their demands range from banning face masks to testing faculty and students for their “viewpoints”. As Jan-Werner Müller, professor of politics at Princeton, wrote, this “…is not just an attack on academic freedom; it is a license to investigate individuals’ minds and consciences”.
Welcome to 1984.
Fortunately, Harvard decided to fight back. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” it informed the government.
“Resist the beginnings” wrote Ovid. Precedents can be dangerous. A small, topical example should suffice. Wimal Weerawansa, in search for an issue, has faulted President Anura Kumara Dissanayake for not observing Sinhala and Tamil new year rituals in full public view. This practice of lighting the hearth and eating at the auspicious times on live TV was started by Mahinda Rajapaksa as a propaganda gimmick. Before him, no Sri Lankan leader, be it from the SLFP/PA or UNP, observed any new year ritual in public. President Dissanayake made a commendable decision to eschew this Rajapaksa exhibitionist practice. The unjust criticism he is facing proves how dangerous some precedents can be.
Like Stickergate.
In the US, Jewish-American university professor Maura Finkelstein lost her tenure for supporting the Palestinian cause (The Intercept, 26.9.2024). In the UK, Stephen Kapos, an octogenarian Holocaust survivor, was questioned by the Metropolitan Police after laying flowers at the Trafalgar Square during a Gaza protest). In Israel, history teacher Meir Baruchin, himself a Jew, was arrested for opposing the Gaza war. “I became a ‘Hamas supporter’ because I expressed my opposition to targeting innocent civilians,” Mr Baruchin said. “Most Israelis don’t know much about Palestinians. They think they are terrorists…” Rather like the police which seem to think that any Sri Lankan Muslim supporting Palestine is a terrorist in the making.
There might be some perverted logic in Israel police’s equation of opposition to Gaza war with support for terrorism. There is absolutely no rationale for the police to think so.
When President Dissanayake defends this inane and unjust police action repeatedly it creates concerns about the way the NPP government is headed. After all, the Rajapaksas began their own march towards unfreedom by arresting journalists under the PTA for alleged collusion with the LTTE. In November 2006, the TID arrested Mawbima journalist Parameswari Manusami under the PTA for helping the LTTE. Three months later, in February 2007, the TID arrested Dushantha Basnayake, the publisher of Mawbima, using the same pretext. Both were released by the supreme court when the police failed to present even a shred of evidence against them.
The similarity between these two cases and what was done to Rusdi needs no belabouring. The Rajapaksa actions fitted with the needs of their power project. There does not seem to be such congruency between the police crackdown on anti-Israeli activists and the NPP/JVP agenda.
So why Stickergate?
In Sri Lanka, terrorists were first synonymous with Tamils, then, after 2019, Muslims. Now it seems a Muslim cannot even express solidarity with murdered Palestinian children without becoming a current or future terrorism suspect. The police were busy in 2024 arresting Tamil kanji makers and questioning a Tamil writer regarding the whereabouts of a character in his novel. In 2025, it is occupied with terrorising Muslims for the such “new crimes” as displaying anti-Israeli stickers, calling Netanyahu a terrorist (he is actually a genocider, something infinitely worse) or feeling grief and anger about the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli army. That is of course when they are not providing tuition teachers with outriders and escort vehicles.
The same police which could have prevented the 2019 Easter Sunday massacre with a few basic precautions and didn’t.
Eternal Recurrence?
The NPP government is supposed to reveal the “mastermind” behind the Easter Sunday massacre tomorrow.
The tale of a “mastermind” was first birthed by Mahinda Rajapaksa two days after the massacre with his mention of a possible a foreign hand behind the attack. In May, Wimal Weerawansa went the whole nine yards and said that the US Ambassador could be behind the attack with Ranil Wickremesinghe’s complicity to turn Sri Lanka into a Libya or Syria (Lanka c news, 3.5.2019). The IS was an American instrument, Udaya Gammanpila informed the parliament. The US had trained Muslims to masquerade as Sinhalese and attack other Muslims, he also claimed; when Muslim countries protest, the West would invade Sri Lanka to keep peace (Lanka c news, 9.5.2019).
Whether there was actually a mastermind and who that was remains to be seen. What is beyond doubt is that the Sri Lankan police was warned about the impending attack by several foreign allies and failed to take even the basic precautionary steps.
For example, the then head of the State Intelligence Services (SIS) Nilantha Jayawardane was the first top official to receive concrete information about an impending attack. By April 21, he knew the names of several potential attackers: Mohamed Zaharan, Mohamed Milhan and Mohamedu Rilwan. If even one of these was arrested, the massacre might not have happened. As the Supreme Court pointed out, “All this shows that there was so much information that was available before Nilantha Jayawardena…but it cannot be said that Nilantha Jayawardena acted with alacrity and promptitude.” In its final report, the Parliamentary Select Committee said that Mr. Jayawardena, the defence secretary, the police chief, the chief of national intelligence and the director of military intelligence “failed in their responsibilities. All were informed of the intelligence information prior to the Easter Sunday attacks but failed to take the necessary steps to mitigate or prevent it.”
The Supreme Court ordered the government to revamp “security systems and intelligence structures.” Ranil Wickremesinghe didn’t and its looks like the NPP won’t. Instead, President Dissanayake’s police are acting no different from Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s police by using the PTA as an instrument of persecution against minorities. In 2020, police arrested Hejaaz Hisbullah and Ahnaf Jazim on charges of terrorism. In 2025, they arrested Rusdi on charges of terrorism. The same police, worse inanities and with much less reason. What is the connection between Sri Lanka’s national security and a sticker saying F!@# Israel?
Soon after the Easter Sunday Massacre, the funeral of a 13 year old victim was held. She had died while attending the Easter mass with her mother. Yet her funeral was held at Negombo Grand Mosque because her father was Muslim. Groundviews reported that “a small group of are also present at the mosque; they pray and recite stanzas of the rosary over the body before it is borne away for burial.” A common grief brought the two communities together. A common grief that could transcend, at least for a short while, the barriers of ethnicity and religion and bridge the divide caused by the Easter Sunday massacre.
The NPP came to power promising to heal those wounds. But in power it is allowing the police to create fresh grievances, in its name. The police, with its unjust action, have already destroyed the life of a 21 year old whose only crime was to grieve for the murdered Palestinian children and to demonstrate his opposition to the genocide peacefully. Punishing such citizens is not the path to reconciliation and healing but to anger, desperation and new heartbreaks.