The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka will hold an online public meeting, titled The international wave of struggles against the killing of Floyd in US and plans for capitalist dictatorship,” on Sunday, June 14 at 3 p.m. local time. The event will be live-streamed via the party’s official Facebook page.

The SEP meeting is being held as hundreds of thousands of people in the US and around the globe have been protesting over the police murder of Floyd on May 25. Large multi-racial and multi-ethnic demonstrations taken place in the US, as well as in Europe, and other cities in Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Mexico.

Although the trigger for this social upheaval was Floyd’s murder, its root cause lies in the immense intensification of social tensions and the political anger of the masses against the sustained attack of the ruling class on basic social and democratic rights. It is a reaction to decades of war abroad, the devastation of living standards and a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny layer of the financial oligarchy.

In response to the social uprising, President Trump has deployed heavily-armed police forces to curb the protests and threatened, in breach of the constitution to deploy the military to take control of the cities. His declarations amount to a coup d’état to establish a dictatorship based on the military.

Like his counterpart in the US, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse in Sri Lanka, presiding over a worsening economic and social crisis, is rapidly moving towards a military dictatorship. His regime has indicated its readiness to brutally suppress the struggles of the working class and oppressed masses.

These menacing developments underscore the necessity for the urgent intervention of the working class internationally to defend democratic rights. The global character of the growing struggles shows the objective conditions exist for building an international movement of the working class to fight against capitalism, which is the source of state repression and social inequality, on the basis of socialism.

We invite workers, youths, intellectuals and WSWS readers to participate in our online meeting that will discuss the need for an internationalist and socialist program.