#GOHOMEGOTA - The story behind Sri Lanka’s hashtagged protest movement

The SOAS Development for Transformation Centre (DevTraC) and the SOAS South Asia Institute (SSAI) are hosting the showing and discussion of the documentary “#GO HOME GOTA”. 

This documentary looks at Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya protests from a protest movement building and mobilisation perspective and centers around interviews with several key activists who were part of the protest movement since its Galle Face occupation began. The interviews were carried out in two rounds, the first, while the Galle Face occupation was ongoing and the second round in January 2023, several months after the occupation was called off in the face of increasingly brutal state repression.

They share their specific movement organisation, building, and communication strategies, the evolution of the movement and the current status amidst a counter-revolutionary repression unleased by the Ranil Wickremasinghe administration.

Biography

Sulochana Peiris is a freelance documentary maker, researcher and writer based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sulo’s recent work has focused on researching, writing, and making documentaries on the women, peace, and security. She is an advocate for increased participation and active involvement of women in addressing transitional justice, peacebuilding, and reconciliation-related issues.

Sulo is a member of a variety of Asia-based women’s networks on human rights and peace. She has a M.A in conflict and peace studies from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Jayanthi Lingham is a research Associate in the University of Sheffield Centre for Care). Jayanthi’s current research focuses on Borders and Care. Previously, she was a research fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at University of Warwick (2019-22). Previously she worked an ESRC-funded study, Care, Caring and Carers, examining the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns on racially minoritised older people and their paid and unpaid carers in the UK.

Prior to this, she was a post-doctoral fellow on a Monash-Warwick Alliance funded study, Inclusive Economies, Enduring Peace: The Transformative Role of Social Reproduction (2019-21), which studied the costs of social reproductive labour in conflict-affected Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Her Phd (SOAS Development Studies 2019) examined women’s working lives in the post-war context of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province.

Subir Sinha is a reader in Development Studies, Department of Development Studies, SOAS. Subir’s research interests are in institutional change, sustainable development, social movement, state society relations in development, and South Asian politics, with a current focus on decentralised development in India, early postcolonial planning, and on the global fish workers movement.

Contact

• Email: devtrac@soas.ac.uk / ssai@soas.ac.uk