With the focus on Ukraine, I lost sight of the catastrophe unfolding in Sri Lanka
Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as vice-dean, undergraduate, in the Faculty of Arts and Science. His most recent novel islingered: The canisters were blue and one of the women was wearing yellow. Was this a show of solidarity with the people of Ukraine?
I began to feel this especially last month, when a colleague at the University of Toronto asked whether I’d be willing to have my name put forward for news media queries about the situation in Sri Lanka. I declined, not being in a position to comment with any particular insight or authority . What I did know came from news items and what my parents had passed on from family and friends and WhatsApp forwards, dating from January onward.
These indicators weren’t particularly explicable of Sri Lanka’s dilemmas, nor was its often-tragic modern history, the main events of which are especially well known in Canada. This country is home to one of the world’s largest Sri Lankan diasporas, the majority of whose members, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver, are part of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.
These continuingly unsuccessful projects have been made possible by billions in loans from China, on China’s terms. This is in keeping with its constricting largesse to poor and struggling countries in Africa and Asia.
to pay down its accumulated foreign debt, which is currently estimated to be at least US$50-billion. All of this has led, in recent months, to broad protests