The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) will hold a public meeting entitled “How to defeat the IMF austerity program” on January 9 at Kandyan Arts Residency Hall in Kandy.
We are holding this meeting following the cancellation of our previously scheduled lecture at Peradeniya University on January 3. The lecture, which was suddenly banned by university authorities, had been sponsored by the university’s Political Science Student Association (PSSA) and permission granted by the head of the Department of Political Science.
On the morning of January 3, however, the IYSSE was informed that the Acting Vice Chancellor of the Peradeniya University had ordered cancellation of the lecture because its topic challenged government policies. Alternatively, the IYSSE was told that it should change the lecture title, an effective ban on the meeting.
The IYSSE immediately issued a statement condemning this political censorship, describing it as an anti-democratic attack on the freedom of expression of the PSSA, university students as a whole and the IYSSE. There were indications that the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)/National People’s Power (NPP) government played a role in the cancellation of the meeting.
We also urged students, university teachers, non-academic workers and other workers and youth to support our right to hold this meeting and condemn the suppression of democratic rights. The IYSSE, however, has decided to hold this meeting in Kandy because of the urgency of its subject matter.
During the IYSSE campaign for the public lecture at Peradeniya campus students, academics and workers expressed their opposition to the brutal IMF austerity measures implemented since 2023 by then President Ranil Wickremesinghe and now continued by the current JVP/NPP government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
These austerity measures, which involve the privatisation or commercialisation of state-owned enterprises, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, and further funding cuts to public health and education, are a life and death question for all working people.
The JVP/NPP government, the establishment parties, the trade union bureaucracies and their fake left hangers-on all defend the capitalist system.
The IYSSE and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP-Sri Lanka) are the only organisations fighting for an independent mobilisation of the working class based on socialist and internationalist policies to defeat the IMF’s brutal social attacks.
We urge workers, students and teachers to attend our forthcoming meeting to discuss these vital issues.
Meeting venue: Kandyan Arts Residency Hall, Kandy
[near Kingswood College]
Date and time: Thursday, January 9, at 4 p.m.