{"id":105486,"date":"2020-08-14T14:52:16","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T21:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=105486"},"modified":"2020-08-14T14:52:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T21:52:16","slug":"sri-lankan-prime-minister-admits-us-is-behind-colombo-port-deal-with-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/08\/14\/sri-lankan-prime-minister-admits-us-is-behind-colombo-port-deal-with-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan prime minister admits US is behind Colombo Port deal with India"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vijith Samarasinghe courtesy WSWS.org <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
14 August 2020<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s government was pushed into crisis by a series of protests by Colombo Port workers last month against plans to privatise the port\u2019s Eastern Container Terminal and hand it over to an Indian company. During the workers\u2019 actions, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse admitted that the US and India want to transfer the terminal to India\u2019s Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking at a port workers\u2019 protest on July 24, Udeni Kaluthantri, the secretary of Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya, which is affiliated to the right-wing United National Party (UNP), revealed that when the union leaders met with Prime Minister Rajapakse at his ancestral home, he told them: [W]e can allow you to unload the gantry cranes, but can\u2019t let the operations start [at the terminal]. I had to go home once, because I got hammered by the US and India. I won\u2019t make the same mistake again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rajapakse was referring to a demand by the unions to fit two gantry cranes at the terminal and start operating it under the government\u2019s Ports Authority, without privatisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Workers protest against privatisation of Colombo port terminal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaluthantri added: During the last regime, the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told me, that you have a right to protest, but don\u2019t protest against [the terminal] privatisation. That will offend India. We cannot protect our government if India is offended.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rajapakse\u2019s reference to being hammered\u201d pointed to the Washington-orchestrated regime-change operation in 2015, which ousted him as president and brought Maithripala Sirisena to power. New Delhi supported the political operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington backed Rajapakse\u2019s brutal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and his anti-democratic rule, but was hostile to his growing relations with Beijing. The US wanted to integrate Sri Lanka into its military encirclement of China and make India a frontline state in its confrontation with Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After taking power, Sirisena appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister. They initially halted all Chinese projects and began integrating the military, particularly the navy, with the US Indo-Pacific Command. They conducted joint exercises and sought to develop the island into a logistics hub. India also enhanced its military and political relations with Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cash-strapped Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government later turned to Beijing for loans and allowed the resumption of Chinese projects, but continued the military integration with the US and India. That explains Wickremesinghe\u2019s statement to the UNP union leader about not being able to offend India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments of both Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe demonstrate the subservience of Sri Lanka\u2019s capitalist establishment to the interests of US imperialism, with which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aligned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 24, the union leaders met with a representative of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse requesting his assurance that the terminal would not be privatised. He refused to issue any such guarantee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Terrified that workers\u2019 anger over the privatisation would spiral out of their control, the union bureaucrats initiated an impotent Sathyagraha\u201d (sit-down protest) from July 29, again demanding a written promise\u201d from the president that [the terminal] will not be privatised.\u201d Some of the unions also tried to divert workers\u2019 opposition into a nationalist anti-Indian campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anti-privatisation protest in Colombo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, 10,000 workers began a strike on July 31, blocking all roads into and inside the port, completely paralysing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Rajapakse not only refused to talk to the unions but attacked the workers\u2019 struggle as an extremist act of sabotage,\u201d declaring: I cannot be intimidated [by such actions].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facing this threat, the union leaders met with the prime minister at his residence again to obtain another empty pledge not to proceed with the agreement with India. Mahinda Rajapakse gave a promise,\u201d but only to prevent the strike continuing, just five days before the August 5 national election. The union leaders immediately called off the stoppage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government, as well as the unions, feared the strike would attract the support of other sections of workers also angered by decades of attacks on social and democratic rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind President Rajapakse\u2019s threat and the manoeuvres by his brother the prime minister lies the pressure of India and the US, which want to gain control over the strategic Colombo port. The president and prime minister, well aware they are treading on a geostrategic minefield, do not want to annoy Washington and New Delhi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahinda Rajapakse\u2019s previous regime allowed China Merchant Port Holdings (CMPH) to build and operate the Colombo South harbour in 2012. The Chinese company also constructed the Hambantota harbour and, a few kilometres away, the Mattala airport. In 2016, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government leased the entire Hambantota port to CMPH. The US and India expressed their concerns and accused China of creating a debt trap\u201d to secure the port.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Indian company\u2019s bid for the terminal is not merely to extract profit from it. It is a move to strengthen India\u2019s grip over the key port\u2014another step in Washington\u2019s economic and military offensive against China, which began under the Obama administration\u2019s pivot to Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the world capitalist crisis escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic, US President Donald Trump has intensified the provocations against China. The US has formed the Asia-Pacific quadrilateral (Quad) alliance with Japan, India and Australia, against China. It also backed India in the deadly border clashes that flared in the Himalayan region between China and India in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Colombo Port workers\u2019 struggle has demonstrated that the US and India want Sri Lanka tied to their strategic and military moves against nuclear-armed China, raising the danger of a catastrophic war in which the island would become embroiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vijith Samarasinghe courtesy WSWS.org 14 August 2020 Sri Lanka\u2019s government was pushed into crisis by a series of protests by Colombo Port workers last month against plans to privatise the port\u2019s Eastern Container Terminal and hand it over to an Indian company. During the workers\u2019 actions, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse admitted that the US and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}