Sri Lanka civic space repression worsens amid wide crackdowns on dissent - CIVICUS Monitor

The CIVICUS Monitor announced in a new report Wednesday that it has downgraded Sri Lanka's civic space rating to ‘repressed,’ with authorities clamping down on protesters, stifling journalists and targeting activists amid mounting public frustration with poor governance and a lack of accountability.

The report, People Power Under Attack 2023, details civic space conditions in 198 countries and territories.

In Sri Lanka, the findings show a sharp decline in civic space. Just one year after mass protests ousted the previous government, the new government does not hesitate to use force to intimidate or disperse gatherings of people criticising the country’s rulers. Authorities have tear-gassed student protesters, assaulted reporters and broken up memorial vigils in the north and east. They even arrested a comedian for her jokes.

“Every month of 2023 seemed to bring a new attack on dissent in Sri Lanka,” said Josef Benedict, CIVICUS Monitor’s Asia-Pacific researcher. “Our report proves that Sri Lanka’s government is repressing its citizens, in clear violation of its international obligations.”

The CIVICUS Monitor rates each country's civic space conditions based on data collected throughout the year from country-focused civil society activists, regionally-based research teams, international human rights indices and the Monitor's own in-house experts. The data from these four separate sources are then combined to assign each country a rating as either ‘open,’ ‘narrowed,’ ‘obstructed,’ ‘repressed’ or ‘closed.’

This year, the CIVICUS Monitor found that nearly a third of humanity, or 30.6% of the global population, lives in ‘closed’ societies, the most restrictive possible environments. This is the highest percentage of people in ‘closed’ countries the CIVICUS Monitor has recorded since its first report in 2018. 

Meanwhile, just 2.1% of people live in ‘open’ countries, where civic space is both free and protected, the lowest percentage yet and almost half the rate of six years ago. Together, these statistics point to a world in crisis.

“We are witnessing an unprecedented global crackdown on civic space,” said CIVICUS Monitor lead researcher Ms. Barreto. “Unfortunately, Sri Lanka’s leaders have chosen to join this worldwide assault on citizens’ rights.”

In Sri Lanka, authorities repeatedly prevented journalists from covering demonstrations or accessing sensitive areas, sometimes with violence. Police and intelligence officials used summonses and lengthy interrogations to try to intimidate human rights defenders. Security forces violently broke up protests that called for everything from student scholarships to land reform to the release of people arrested in previous protests.

The authorities also tried to stifle dissent through legislative means, using draconian laws to criminalise civil society activists. New bills could further restrict speech online and offline.

“If anything ties all attacks on civic freedoms together, it’s that the Sri Lankan authorities don’t want anyone to question their decisions,” said Benedict. “But Sri Lankan citizens continue to mobilise to demand justice and reforms anyways. The government should learn from the past and listen to people exercising their rights rather than try to silence them through force.”

The other downgraded countries this year are Bangladesh (closed), Bosnia & Herzegovina (obstructed), Germany (narrowed), Kyrgyzstan (repressed), Senegal (repressed) and Venezuela (closed).

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact: media@civicus.org