Colombo: Sri Lankan security forces raided an anti-government protest camp in the commercial capital Colombo early on Friday, two protest organisers said, a sign that the country’s new president was cracking down a day after his swearing in.
Hundreds of security personnel surrounded the “Gota Go Gama” protest camp, mockingly named after the former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, past midnight and then took apart a section of it, the two organisers said.
After surrounding the camp, security personnel moved in front of the presidential secretariat, started dismantling some tents and assaulted protesters in the area, protest organiser Manjula Samarasekara said.
Members of Sri Lankan security forces patrol the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo in the early hours of Friday.Credit:Getty Images
A part of the colonial-era secretariat was occupied by protesters, along with the president and prime minister’s official residences earlier this month. The residences were later handed back to government authorities.
“Very concerned about reports from the Galle Face protest site,” Sarah Hulton, the British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, said in a tweet.
“We have made clear the importance of the right to peaceful protest.”
Sri Lankan soldiers raided the anti-government protest camp outside of the Presidential Secretariat in the early morning hours of July 22, breaking down tents and forcibly removing activists.Credit:Getty Images
At least 50 protesters were injured, the organisers said, including some journalists who were beaten by security forces.
“It was a systematic and premeditated attack,” protest organiser Chameera Dedduwage said. “They actually brutally attacked people.”
Police and army spokespeople did not immediately respond to calls from Reuters.
Hours later, new President Ranil Wickremesinghe told the military to maintain order across key districts the South Asian nation’s capital.
Wickremesinghe is set to appoint a new prime minister and cabinet on Friday morning (Colombo time), local media reported, as he moves to put a government in place to revive bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund.
The ministers will be sworn in after they are appointed at 9am, according to local media, which cited the president’s media division. Dinesh Gunawardena, a senior MP and close associate of Wickremesinghe, is expected to be named prime minister, according to several reports.
Sri Lanka is under a state of emergency imposed by Wickremesinghe on Sunday. Previous emergency regulations have been used to give powers to the military to detain and arrest protesters, and curtail the right to protest.
Wickremesinghe, the former prime minister, was sworn into office on Thursday after winning a parliamentary vote this week, following the resignation of Rajapaksa who fled to Sri Lanka in the wake of massive public protests triggered by the country’s worst economic crisis in seven decades.
Reuters
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