Universities & Student Protests: Too Much Blood
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Sri Lanka has a lot of protests, most of them conducted by local universities. We protest everything – governments, private education, scholarships, private education, private education… you get the picture. It seems that every other month there’s a couple of metal barricades and one of them water cannon machines rolling up the road.
I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being caught up in a couple of these, and the level of thought gone into these is incredible. Mindless chanters – check. Coerced students – check. Placards. Banners onna stick. Firebrands strung at strategic intervals to make sure everyone’s equally involved. There are always university students who, for fear of ragging, temporarily take up the robes of a Buddhist monk: these are generally placed front and center. Give it a couple more years and we’ll have enough expertise to launch a B.A. in Professional Protesting.
Usually it stops there. Usually people block traffic for a while, or sit on a pavement outside the Colombo Fort Railway Station, and usually bemused-looking cops hang back and hope nobody does anything foolish. Then everybody goes away.
This time, the excrement made physical contact with the electrically powered oscillating air current distribution device.
Let me now say the obvious thing that everybody expects you to say: this was wrong, those cops should be arrested, etcetera, etcetera, students, innocent, people getting people, blood, etcetera.
At the same time, it is inevitable. Policemen are humans, and humans are not known for rational action. We go overboard. We do cruel things to one another. Perhaps there was one cop who had seen too many protests and had too many stones thrown at them. Perhaps Han shot first. This isn’t an excuse, but this is expected.
Now pull back a bit. This is not an isolated case. Why are students protesting? Why are there always students protesting? Read More
