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T
he janatha aragalaya or “people’s struggle” that pushed Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of office mid-last year has turned out to be the first ever “entry” point for the country’s LGBTQ+ community to be part of a mainstream space.
Indeed, since then, the community has been marking one ‘first’ after another as more and more Sri Lankans seemingly become more open to LGBTQ+ people. In an island-wide survey published last September, 72 percent of the respondents even said that they do not support laws punishing LGBTQ+ people. A little more than half of the respondents (51.4 percent) also said they would support laws that would enhance LGBTQ+ rights.
Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka, which criminalizes sexual activity among same-sex people, is known for discrimination, violence, and harassment against the LGBTIQ community – whose population is not even officially mapped. But the aragalaya was a rare opportunity for the community to receive public acceptance.

At the ‘GotaGoGama’ protest site at Colombo’s Galle Face Green last year, rainbow flags flew as LGBTQ+ members ran awareness campaigns in front of other tents, explaining to people how to separate facts from the myths about the community. And for the first time, a pride rally was held last June on Colombo’s streets, covering a distance of three kms from Kollupitiya to the Presidential Secretariat.
Gender activist Kaushalya Ariyarathne explains that when people from different walks of life came together for the “mass protests” for the larger goal – Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation — LGBTQ+ persons saw it a “safe place” to raise their issues.
Political science researcher Pasan Jayasinghe meanwhile says, “When so many people were out on streets spelling out their frustration over the dying economy, we, as members of the LGBTIQ community, too stepped out to register our protest against the prolonged discrimination against us. People were compassionate to listen, and it gave us the confidence to tell our stories.”
Reassurances and apologies
For sure, the protest movement was eventually crushed after the newly elected president Ranil Wickremesinghe unleashed the military and police against the demonstrators. But the government has since tried to give signals to LGBTQ+ people that it is sensitive about their rights.
Last September, Wickremesinghe said that the government will not oppose a Private Member’s Bill presented to parliament to decriminalize homosexuality. Three months later, Inspector General of Police Chandana D. Wickramaratne apologized for the force’s acts of violence against the community, even as representatives of the ministry of women, child affairs, and social empowerment for the first time asked the police to address their grievances.
Yet while talking about LGBTQ+ rights on the floor of the parliament makes the government look “progressive” and “internationally acceptable,” Ariyarathne points out that it’s not really clear if the state is serious about these rights. The rights advocate recounts that although Sri Lanka’s health, nutrition, and indigenous medicine ministry in 2016 released detailed guidelines and process for the issuance of gender-recognition certificates for those who identify as a transgender person seeking a legal gender change, it still takes months — sometimes, years — to receive these documents.
Sources: Commonwealth Round Table, The Thaiger, Reuters, PBS, Human Rights Watch
Ariyarathne says that the government’s lack of commitment to LGBTQ+ rights could be assessed by examining whether the government’s regressive steps interfering with Tamil and Muslim minorities and journalist’s free speech have been amended or not.
Jayasinghe apparently agrees, saying that the routine attacks on human rights defenders by the state forces after Wickremesinghe took power don’t give him much hope. “It’s harder to think of a pink parade in Colombo now,” admits the 33-year-old.
“All these rights are intersectional,”Ariyarathne argues. “If all these rights are compromised, it’s highly doubtful that the government will take any concrete steps to safeguard LGBTIQ rights.”
In fact, the President’s Counsel MUM Ali Sabry has already said that although the government will support the position of decriminalizing same-sex relationships, it will not legalize same-sex marriages. In 2017, Deputy Solicitor General Nerin Pulle had also said that the government planned to decriminalize homosexuality, and was committed to law reform and guarantee non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. But no official movement toward that direction happened.
A hate history
Sri Lanka prohibits same-sex sexual activity under the Penal Code 1883, which is inherited from the British, who ruled the island nation till 1948. Violation of the law has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine. Police have also targeted transgender people by misusing the colonial Vagrancy Ordinance that regulates “decency” and penalizes certain social behaviors.
In 2019, the Sri Lanka police’s performance report even called homosexuality a “vice” that adversely affects society’s morality and well-being. The same report stated that the police had prosecuted nine people for homosexuality in 2018, six in 2017 and 33 in 2016.
In 2020, the police in Colombo raided a private hotel room and arrested three men on charges of “homosexuality,” and cited an unopened packet of condoms found in the hotel bathroom as grounds for arrest. Last June, at the time of aragalaya itself, a lesbian couple was reportedly arrested by police upon the complaint by one of the women’s father, who objected to their relationship.
In 2021, a counselor openly made homophobic remarks at a police training in Kandy. But that led to public outrage, which in turn prompted the Sri Lanka College of Psychiatrists to say that it didn’t consider homosexuality a mental illness and called for its decriminalization.
English teacher Anddru, who uses only his first name, comments that the discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community comes from the misogyny and gender inequality prevalent in society. For example, he says, sex education classes are offered to boys and girls separately in his mixed-gender government school in Jaffna. At the school assembly, boys are made to stand ahead of the girls.
“Initially, while girls were made to clean the kitchen after midday meal, no boys offered to help them,” says Anddru, 27. “When I tried to help the girls clean the kitchen, the girls didn’t allow me to do so. But I volunteered to help them, I wanted to become a role model for the boys. Now the boys also help the girls to clean the kitchen.”
Unfortunately, he says, the boys still feel that girls are “inferior” to them because this has been fed to them since childhood. Remarks Anddru: “One has to feed them lessons on gender equality first, before spreading awareness about the LGBTIQ rights.”
LGBTQ+ people obviously wish that changes would happen soon. Researcher Jayasinghe says that even during the aragalaya, a section of the protesters at GotaGoGama initially didn’t want the pride rally to culminate at the protest site.
“They were more keen to have us in the protest to add to the headcount, but they were not receptive,” Jayasinghe says. “They became more receptive and supportive after due negotiations with them.”
Ariyarathne, for his part, cites the online outrage over an advertisement of a rainbow cake made by a local bakery last Valentine’s Day as evidence that the “misogyny, stigma, and “hatred” to which the LGBTQ+ people are subjected in social media and in person remain strong.
Time for another aragalaya?
Twenty-five-year-old , a queer artist from war-torn Jaffna in Northern Province, is just among the countless LGBTQ+ people who have been at the receiving end of persistent homophobic behavior in Sri Lanka.
A second-year student at Bachelor of Performing Arts (Special) in Bharatanatyam at Jaffna University, Sathurshan says that his seniors sexually and physically abused him as a part of ragging.
“They alienate queer students within the classroom, the male students don’t sit with them,” he says. “They wanted me to be more macho, used local slangs abusing my sexuality.”
But Sathurshan has happy memories of the aragalaya and had participated in the pride rally in June 2022 in Colombo. He recalls that when they were marching, people offered them food and water, and police didn’t disrupt the march either.
After coming back from Colombo, Sathurshan joined another pride walk in Jaffna. His group for gender activism, Jaffna Sangam, also organized a 10-day queer festival across Batticaloa in Eastern Province, and Nuwara Eliya and Kandy in Central Province, besides Jaffna.
Over 100 Jaffna university students organized a gender-equality march last June as well, in which LGBTQ+ community rights were highlighted. The next month, Sathurshan, who is also a trained Bharatnatyam dancer, performed a contemporary dance using cosmetics as props, to express the hate and abuse that the queer-community members face whenever they wear makeup in public.

It was the first time a queer artist was allowed to perform in the open at the university, he says. Sathurshan also recalls, “At the end of the performance, some students cried and apologized for being abusive to queer people earlier.”
But Athena Fernandez, a criminal and forensic psychology student in Colombo, is pessimistic over the chances of Sri Lankan laws finally recognizing LGBTQ+ rights. She says that religious groups are against LGBTQ+ persons, and that these will never allow the government to make any legal reforms in favor of the community.
“The government will not upset them for political reasons,” Fernandez says. “During the aragalaya, people… realized that our demands are not illegitimate. But we may need another aragalaya exclusively for transgender people.”◉