Global worker protests and tools of autocratization in Sri Lanka Rendering them silent

Focusing on a global factory worker protest in May 2011 in Sri Lanka’s Katunayke Free Trade Zone, this chapter highlights how the government used payments, threats, factionning and co-option to render protesting groups silent. The chapter thus argues that these psychological and cultural tools operate to suppress people’s voices especially within gendered working class struggles. Throughout history governments have used violence against their own citizenry. This took many forms—including physical, psychological, and cultural. The chapter analyzes the 2011 protest and explore follow-up research among the same group of workers in 2016 to assess how the suppression of 2011 protest affected future collective organizing, and argue that the apathy that resulted from such silencing damage workers’ political voice just as much as physical violence or destruction of property does.