In 2022, in response to shortages, escalating inflation and a catastrophic economic crisis, a series of protests in Sri Lanka shifted the political fortunes of the Rajapaksa-led alliance, which had secured power with a parliamentary super-majority only two years earlier. The protests led to the resignations of Basil, Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa – respectively, the finance minister, prime minister and president. Sri Lankans publicly disavowed politicians accused of corruption and economic mismanagement, the Rajapaksas included, and protesters set fire to the homes of numerous politicians from the Rajapaksas' Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).
That May, there were reports that Mahinda was taking shelter at a naval base in Trincomalee, in the north-east of the country, along with his wife and children. The family is deeply unpopular in this region – where they oversaw the brutal conclusion of the Sri Lankan Civil War, fought most fiercely in the island's North and East – but there were far fewer protests related to the economy here compared to elsewhere, and public outcry was less vocal.
When activists in the South asked why there was a lack of participation in anti-government protests in the North and East, the irony was clear. Tamils and Muslims, concentrated in the North and East, had voted as a bloc to prevent the presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2019. They had low expectations of the Rajapaksa family to begin with. Protesters in these regions are also faced with intense surveillance, violence and state oppression in the aftermath of the war, such that the relatively peaceful progress of protests in the South, not immediately suppressed by brute force, was considered a privilege. Tamils noted a further hypocrisy: the Sinhala-dominated South rarely shows solidarity with protests held in the North and East against the Sri Lankan government's failings and excesses.
Numerous other protests in the North and East have also had minimal impact, so there is cynicism about their utility. Families of the disappeared here, who number in the thousands, have been engaged in continuous protests since 2017, but have had no success in learning the fates of their loved ones. Although Tamils in Keppapulavu and Valikamam North have been calling for the return of their homes for years, many still live as refugees while their lands remain under military occupation. "There isn't much hope that there will be a massive change here," Dr S Sivathas, a consultant psychiatrist at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, said. At the same time, there are some ways in which the North and East are acclimated to crisis. Sivathas added that older Tamils who have withstood hardship during and after the war have a higher level of psychological resilience.