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I Spent A Day in Bankrupt Sri Lanka (Sad Reality) ශ්රී ලංකාව
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Apr 14, 2025
I Spent One Day in Bankrupt Sri Lanka, talking to locals and understanding what they see as the future of their beautiful home! sending you love Sri Lanka! thank you to my phenomenal friend Ruzaina for helping me with this video and giving your all to helping Sri Lanka through this tough time! @RuzainaHadgie support my channel: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jaypalfrey Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjaypalfrey #srilanka #colombo #documentary
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0:00
Sri Lanka, a country which I was blessed to visit back in December 2021, a country which is now suffocating under the rule of one family
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Sri Lanka! I'm flying back to the capital city of Colombo to see what is really happening on the ground
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it's currently july 15th here in sri lanka two days ago on july 13th the president left the
0:29
country fled the country fled the what was peaceful protest and left to the maldives i'm here in
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colombo the capital city today on july 15th to understand what the people are going through here
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to understand their point of view and to really see what they see for the future of this beautiful
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island a country six months ago which i came to was thriving it was such a beautiful country the
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people were so hospitable and just six months later the country is going through economic turmoil and
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hostilities so let's explore today declared a state of emergency just hours after president
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gotabaya rajapaksa fled to the maldives testers try to topple a bus and then set it on fire
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Waiting for fuel, so much frustration. There isn't enough petrol in Sri Lanka
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The government has run out of money. My age is 25. I'm waiting here 15 days
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The Prime Minister, Ranil Vikramasinghe, has declared himself acting president. Police have fired tear gas at protesters calling for his resignation
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Demonstrations against Sri Lanka's dire economic situation turn violent. What's your name
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My name is Suranga. Nice to meet you. And you have your tricycle? Yeah
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How long have you been waiting for fuel? Five days. Five days. And you have been sleeping inside your tricycle? Yeah
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For five days. And still no fuel? Yeah. And how many more days will you have to wait
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One day. One more day? Yeah. So six days to fill up your tuk-tuk
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Right now I'm heading towards Ghoul Face, which is on the promenade, which is where a lot of the protests are actually happening
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and as you can see behind me, there are rows and rows and rows
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of tuk-tuks waiting for fuel to be able to just live their ordinary life
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and do their job. I just spoke to a guy who had been waiting for five whole days
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just to get fuel and he will wait another day in this huge queue just to get fuel to be able to do his job That almost a week of no money That is catastrophic for people living here especially if they have to support families You see a lot of scenes like this where the tuk have just run out of fuel and now he has to take it all the way to the end of the street
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to be able to fill up. Five days of waiting. What better way to understand what is really going on
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on the ground than going to the presidential palace which was overtaken by protesters just a few days ago
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so after finally getting a tuk tuk after a long time of waiting and walking we've arrived here
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to the governmental palace we drove past six kilometers of tuk tuks waiting days which will
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go into weeks waiting for fuel and we've arrived here at the governmental palace which just yesterday
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was filled with protesters which overtook the palace i'm gonna head inside talk to protesters
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talk to the people and understand what it's like really being here in Sri Lanka
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And as you can see behind me, the gigantic presidential palace
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which just a few days ago was taken over by the protests. Inside now, they've actually turned it into a public library
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where people can go in read books and rest from what has been 97 days of protesting As you can see behind me there a lot of news journalists and broadcasters probably spreading lies about what actually really
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going on but as you can see behind me these are very peaceful people, very peaceful protests
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and you really have to begin to think why protests begin to get more violent and angry
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and it's because politicians never listen. All these people are so peaceful and they're so calm
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there's music they really just want a better future for their country which i completely
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and empathetically understand these people deserve their island to be prosperous what it should really
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be and it really was six months ago when i arrived here and just six months later it's so different
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the energy here is very somber they all just want a better future for sri lanka and i do too
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okay so this is my amazing friend razena who i met last year six months ago
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here on this beautiful island can you just explain a little bit about what's going on here in sri
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lanka so what's going on right now is an unprecedented protest that has never ever
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ever happened before ever in sri lanka so they're protesting against a very very corrupt regime
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a particular family in particular. It's just one family that has been really corrupt
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and they are protesting against it. We are protesting against it. Sri Lanka obviously is an island that relies heavily on tourism
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and especially after COVID, the country is pretty much collapsing. What is the economic effects of COVID and tourism on the country
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So COVID hit really, really bad. The entire country just shut down
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like just like any other place like in the plant on the planet but the thing is we rely heavily on
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tourism and there are so many businesses that rely on tourism and it trickles down to a lot of
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families especially women like women who are looking after their children they have wayside
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shops and they have like little restaurants and so many things like that that they are running
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and it's all complete it was all completely shut down during the covid covid happened in 2020 but
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Now, given today, there was no proper plan, there was no proper infrastructure
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there was no proper tourism plan to help out Sri Lankan people
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and today there's no fuel, there's no gas, and there's no way of people to function
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We are out of basic necessities, we are out of everything. So much so that women are actually healing themselves and their children
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because they can afford to feed themselves or their children and you get a lot of cases like that there are so many people suffering and it just it just a very very sad situation in sri lanka at the moment and
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tourism is one of the most needed gdps in the country at the moment
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okay so after a little while speaking to the local people here understanding their
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ideas about the future of sri lanka around this area there are a lot of medical tents
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food tents to support the people protesting and to support the movement and to secure a healthy
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and happy future for Sri Lanka. So let's head around the corner, speak to local people and
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understand what they see for the future of this beautiful island country
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So every single demonstration I've come across so far here in Colombo has been incredibly peaceful
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As you can see behind me, people just recording, speaking their free voice and trying to project what they see for the future of Sri Lanka
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All of the tests are going on here for all of the medicine. And there's actually a tent behind me for the deaf community so they can understand what's going on and really project their voice too
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What is the people behind me? Go home, God. outside of the presidential palace there are a lot of tents to help those people
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who cannot afford food water anything else in between behind me is a tent for disabled people
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i'm going to go inside and understand try to understand what they're going through right now
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here in tri lanka this is a lovely family which i met inside the tent of course infuriated and angry at the current
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political situation. Their family works in tourism. Tourism, of course, has been hugely
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affected in the past couple of years due to COVID and other factors. And with this political
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situation going on now, who knows the future and who knows what they have in store for
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the future of their family? Sri Lanka is a beautiful country which relies 60% on tourism
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Having visited myself, it's emotional to see the country in this devastating state
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I hope in the future Sri Lanka can rebuild itself and become one of the best tourist destinations in the world like it used to be
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like I experienced back in December 2021
#Politics
#Poverty & Hunger
#Tourist Destinations
#World News