Today, Explained - Sri Lankans have had enough

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Sri Lanka’s “Go home, Gota!” protesters want to throw President Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of office. Reveal’s Ike Sriskandarajah explains what could happen if Gota "goes home" to the serene suburbs of Southern California. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Haleema Shah with help from Victoria Dominguez, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and edited by Matt Collette and Sean Rameswaram, who also hosted. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For weeks, Sri Lankans have been out in the streets. A cost-of-living crisis after a pandemic has brought thousands to the streets. They're screaming, go home, Gota. Gota, go home. Gota is alleged war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the country's president. Home is like, literally literally get out of office, but also home is weirdly the sunny suburbs of Southern California. That's where Gota lived before becoming president of Sri Lanka. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was doing what anybody does at a Trader Joe's parking lot.

He was with his family and he was going on a grocery shopping trip. The economic and political crisis in Sri Lanka and what the United States might do if that country's alleged war criminal president runs back to his house in SoCal. Ahead on Today Explained. Groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. So Sri Lanka is currently in a severe economic crisis. This is Amita Arudpragasam. She's a policy analyst and writer based in the capital, Colombo.

Yesterday, the central bank governor, Nandala Weersinger, said that there weren't enough reserves to import essential items, even for two weeks. And he warned that the economy would collapse beyond redemption, those are his words, if politicians fail to form a new government within two days to return the country to some sort of political stability. Due to the pressure from the protests, the Prime Minister, Mahindra Rajapaksa, was actually compelled to resign. And now the entire Sri Lankan cabinet stands dissolved, and there are talks underway to form a new interim government. That's a big deal. Up until this week, the Rajapaksa family essentially had a chokehold on the entire Sri Lankan government. The main demands of protesters at these protests has been, of course, not just for the prime

minister to resign, but also his brother, the president, Gota Bayarajapaksa, to resign as well. Some of the slogans include things like Go Home Gota. And I've even seen protesters holding up boards saying that they'd like the president to return back to America because the president was a naturalized citizen of the United States until very recently. If Sri Lanka's president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, were to flee Sri Lanka amidst protests and say, return to the United States, where he used to live and up until recently was a naturalized citizen, he'd be presenting the U.S. government with some interesting questions like, is it our responsibility to figure out if this

guy is guilty of mass murder and a host of war crimes? We're going to try and answer that question on the show today. But first, we're going to explain who the Rajapaksas are and how they came to run Sri Lanka into the ground. I'm going to try and get you up to speed quickly here. The Rajapaksas were born to a prominent political family in Sri Lanka. Gautam Bhaiya Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lankan military in the 1970s. When his brother Mahinda became president of the country in 2005, he made Ghota the secretary of defense. The two of them then set about ending a civil war that had been raging throughout the island for a few decades.

That civil war pitted the ethnic Tamil minority against the Sinhalese majority. The backstory there is long and complicated, but colonialism didn't help. The British favored the Tamils. When Sri Lanka gained independence, the Sinhalese took over. Tamils were underrepresented. That led to conflict. The Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla force, was born. They wanted an independent state in the northeast of the country.

They terrorized civilians. A war began. But the Rajapaksas figured out how to end that war. They were brutal. Estimates say tens of thousands were murdered. Reports say women and girls were raped to the victor. Goes to spoils, and it's estimated the Rajapaksa brothers have misappropriated billions of dollars. And they've been more or less in power ever since. Mahinda was president for 10 years. He's been prime minister a handful of times.

Gotabaya became president in 2019. And various other brothers have been in various cabinet positions and littered elsewhere throughout the government. Despite claims of corruption, nepotism, and war crimes, these guys have won election after election after election until maybe now. Now it finally seems like the Rajapaksa era could come to an end. And it won't be a political opponent that really defeats them. It'll be fallout from COVID-19. During the pandemic and after Gautam B. Rajapaksa was elected, the government implemented lots of

policies that were very detrimental and actually exacerbated some of Sri Lanka's structural economic weaknesses, tax cuts, import substitution policies, a chemical fertilizer ban, which devastated our agricultural yields. And they failed to address any of Sri Lanka's structural weaknesses, including a lower tax to GDP ratio, weak export performance, and so on. Sri Lanka already had an incredibly high debt to GDP ratio and very low levels of government revenue. So in 2021, about two-thirds of our revenue was used to make debt service payments. And the you know, the tax cuts, for example, shrunk our tax base by about 33%, dropped our tax revenue by about 25%. And were incredibly devastating. We just didn't have enough revenue to make our debt repayments. And we started to be shut out of international

financial markets when we were consistently downgraded by credit rating agencies that didn't think that we would be able to make good on our payments. Which is, I imagine, how the protests began? Yeah, exactly. So for at least two months now, protesters across the country, they've been peacefully registering their discontent at Sri Lanka's worsening economic environment. I came here to show my support for the people who are doing the protest. And also, I believe that we need to do our part to stop this corruption.

Sometimes it was people standing in line for gas who just got fed up and started to protest. Sometimes it was individuals in a neighborhood who started putting out placards. But then these small protests started to escalate when the country experienced drug shortages, fuel shortages and power cuts. More than a dozen houses belonging to leading politicians were vandalized. Local TV also showed protesters toppling buses and pushing cars into the water. In hospitals, for example, the drug shortage meant that surgeries were unable to be performed. People for the last couple of months have been finding it harder and harder to afford food. We've seen people pawn away their jewelry just to make ends meet. And lots of people,

lots of families complaining that they've had to forego meals so that they can afford other essentials. And that's really where you see these protests attracting in more people. Go, go, go! Go, go, go! Go Minister Mahindra Rajapaksa, or at least he was the Prime Minister then, were bussed to his official residence for a show of strength before the Prime Minister was intended to resign. His resignation was in part a result of increasing public pressure. And we then saw these pro-government groups attacked two protest sites. Hundreds of ruling party supporters storm an

anti-government protest site outside Sri Lanka's presidential office, tearing down tents and attacking its inhabitants. And a lot of this was caught on tape, showing these pro-government groups attacking protesters, including women. And so in the last week, following this incident, which was captured and shared widely on social media, retaliatory violence occurred as well. Police say the violence led to several deaths, including an MP who shot two people when a mob swarmed his car before killing himself. But the president refuses to resign.

He said he would appoint a prime minister, a new prime minister, a cabinet acceptable to the public within this week and reintroduce a constitutional amendment, which includes some checks and balances on executive power. He also said he would abolish the executive presidency. But we've seen a state of emergency being imposed, curfews. And yesterday, we were also told by the defense ministry that the armed forces were now instructed to open fire if necessary to quell violence. There are a lot of parallels, I suppose, between the way the civil war and its aftermath was

managed and the way that protesters are being managed now. You saw after the end of the war, the Tamil community being alienated and demonized as individuals who could not be trusted as extremists. And that kind of rhetoric was deployed as well against the protesters as politically motivated groups, extremists, radicals. But if this situation ends anything like the end of the civil war did, then there's a good reason for the Sri Lankan population to be fearful. That was Amita Arutpragasam from Colombo. In a minute, what happens if this goes the other way,

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today, today explained. Today Explained, Ramesh Furam, we're back. Immediately before Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president of Sri Lanka, he was living the suburban dream in Southern California. In fact, while he was living in SoCal, some people actually tried to hold him to account for war crimes. In fact, they tried to hold him to account in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's. And if you were wondering what Gotabaya Rajapaksa was doing in the parking lot of a Trader Joe's in Montrose, California, we asked Ike Sriskandarajah. he recently answered that question for a reveal. Well, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was doing what anybody does at a Trader Joe's parking lot.

He was with his family and he was going on a grocery shopping trip. The thing that makes him a little different than the rest of the customers is that he was being followed there. So this private investigator is following him. I do a lot of fraud. I do a lot of missing person cases. And then I do hard serves.

She's been hired to tail this guy and she specializes in delivering legal documents to people who are especially hard to find. When I talked to her, she just could barely remember or pronounce his name. She said, so the subject was Goda. And forgive me, I cannot remember his last name.

Anyway, so she's following him and she's kind of looking over her shoulders. She's looking for a secret service detail, some kind of military presence that would protect this high-level military figure. But there's nobody. I mean, he's just there with his family in this parking lot. And that's when she decides to move. When I got out, I called for his name. and when I called his name, he turned around. And then when I walked up to him, I noticed his wife was looking at me, who is this person. And I went to hand him the envelope, and he reached out to receive it. And as soon as I said, you've been served, he quickly pulled his hand behind his back. Since he refused to take it, I just dropped him at his feet.

We got you on tape, sir. You've got to take him. You've been served. What is he being served with? What are these legal docs? Yeah, so the contents of that manila envelope contain legal documents for two civil lawsuits. This is an alleged war criminal. Why is it civil? It's a civil lawsuit because for years, these human rights groups who are bringing this lawsuit on behalf of Gota's alleged victims, had wanted the Department of Justice to bring a criminal federal investigation and prosecution from the U.S. government. And this was really their last-ditch attempt to hold him accountable in a U.S. court. It happens to be a civil court. And the U.S. government has a really bad track record of ever prosecuting alleged war criminals on U.S. soil. But we have tried in the United

States? For decades, the U.S. government has known about alleged war criminals living here, and they have tried for years to try to hold them accountable. And this really started to become an issue that a lot of people were paying attention to after Nazi war criminals were found living in the U.S. after World War II. Anyway, this all leads to congressional action. And the president, Jimmy Carter, at the time, launches a new investigative outfit based inside the Department of Justice, a Nazi hunting unit.

We had a Nazi hunting unit? We had a Nazi hunting unit of great renown, the Office of Special Investigations. And one of the original Nazi hunters, Eli Rosenbaum, was there at the beginning, and he's still at the Department of Justice now. And I interviewed him for this story. It took our own country nearly 30 years from when the first World War II Nazi criminal was found in the United States to finally launch in 1979 a comprehensive program to identify, investigate, and prosecute

the cases. So how did it go? Did it work? Did the Nazi hunting unit accomplish a whole lot of stuff? Yeah. In some ways, they were incredibly efficient and good at their jobs. Dozens of Nazi war persecutors were tried in U.S. courts. And in that way, it was really effective. And in another way, it was really disappointing. How come? The charges that were brought against them were only for immigration issues. And that's because genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity,

those weren't crimes under U.S. law. How is it that the United States doesn't have laws on the books in the late 70s, early 80s against the greatest crimes man can commit? That's because Congress hadn't passed them. The president hadn't signed them. In the 1990s, I questioned a suspect of ours, Jacob Reimer. He lived north of New York City and came into the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. He had admitted to participation in genocide, mass murder, and the law just wasn't there. All we could do was bid him farewell to go back out of the building and take Metro North home.

There had been members of Congress who had been working on this issue and advocating that we should have these laws for years. I'm Senator William Proxmar of Wisconsin. A genocide convention or treaty is pending before the United States Senate. It's in the Foreign Relations Committee. And I feel that we should have passed this treaty long ago. And it's disgraceful that we haven't passed it yet. But it didn't pass until that senator was just about to retire in 1988. And that was the first time the U.S. passed what's known as substantive human rights law, criminalizing genocide.

Huh. So we do have these types of laws on the books now. We just didn't then? We didn't then. So the genocide statute that criminalized the intentional destruction of an entire group of people. That passed in 1988. And in the coming years and decades, the U.S. passed other substantive human rights statutes against torture, war crimes, and most recently, as of 2008, the recruitment of child soldiers. Okay, so by 2008, the recruitment of child soldiers. Okay, so by 2008, the United States has a whole host of laws on the books against these kinds of

international crimes against humanity. How often are they pursuing these kinds of cases in the United States? Well, the Department of Justice had a pretty big victory after that last human rights statute was passed in 2008. They had their first conviction under any substantive human rights law. It was a case against the son of the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Chucky Taylor Jr. He was the first person convicted of any substantive human rights law, and he was convicted of torture, and a Florida judge sentenced him to 97 years. She is currently still serving. So that's like one instance. One instance of many, or that's just the one? That's just the one. Why is that? Is the United States afraid to prosecute these kinds of crimes because someone might turn around and try and arrest George W. Bush for torture when he goes to

Munich for Oktoberfest or something? I mean, I think what you're pointing at is that one of the central challenges to this work is U.S. prosecuting international war crimes has a ring of hypocrisy to it because the U.S. is also accused of committing international war crimes. And the Department of Justice has never charged U.S. officials using those top shelf criminal statutes either. So if Gota leaves Sri Lanka and comes back to the United States, it sounds like it's pretty unlikely that he will stand trial for these alleged war crimes. It's unlikely that he would be charged, criminally charged under these substantive statutes that have never been used for his alleged war crimes. It's much more likely that once he loses head of state immunity,

that there's a possibility of the civil suits reaching him again. Hmm. What were those civil suits? One is from a Tamil man who was detained and alleged and accuses the former defense secretary, current president of Sri Lanka, of illegally detaining him and torturing him. And it also contains another lawsuit brought by the family of one of the most prominent and critical journalists who was killed in 2009. And his family holds the defense secretary responsible for that murder. The journalist's name is Lysantha Wickramatunge. Lysantha launched this series of articles

accusing the defense secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, of corruption in this complicated arms deal. Gota then sued him for that, and Lissanto was supposed to appear in court with more information of the allegations from his investigation. But shortly before he was scheduled to appear in court, a group of men on motorcycles attacked his car and killed him in the streets of Colombo, not far from the Sunday Leader. But just before he died, he actually predicted his own assassination, like on some biggie prophecy-level stuff. He addressed this letter to the people he held responsible for killing him. And I ended up talking to one of his former colleagues,

who was just a young, fledgling cub reporter when she first interviewed with La Santa to become a reporter at the Sunday Leader. And I asked Darisha if she would mind reading an excerpt of that letter, that final posthumous essay. I hope my assassination will be seen not as a defeat of freedom, but an inspiration for those who survived to step up their efforts.

Indeed, I hope that it will galvanize forces that will usher in a new era of human liberty in our beloved motherland. I also hope it will open the eyes of your president to the fact that however many are slaughtered in the name of patriotism, the human spirit will endure and flourish. Not all the Rajapaksas combined can kill that. Ike Sreeskandarajah is with Reveal over at the Center for Investigative Reporting. You can find Reveal wherever you find Today Explained. His episode about Gotabaya Rajapaksa and prosecuting war crimes and war criminals in the United States dropped just a few weeks ago.

It's called My Neighbor, the Suspected War Criminal. It's much longer and way more in-depth than what we could do here today. It's also fascinating. Go listen. I like Ike. I'm Sean Ramos-Viram. I edited today's show with Matthew Collette,

Heidi Mawagdi, and Halima Shah produced it. Paul Mounsey engineered. Laura Bullard fact-checked with help from Tori Dominguez. Thank you for listening.