COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s beleaguered President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was “escorted to safety” from his official residence in the capital on Saturday, a top defence source told AFP, before television footage showed protesters demanding the leader’s resignation storming the compound.”The President was escorted to safety,” the source said, adding that troops fired in the air to prevent angry crowds from overrunning the President’s Palace.
At least seven persons, including two policemen, have been injured so far in clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters who had gathered in large numbers in the central Colombo’s Fort area demanding Rajapaksa’s resignation.
Tens of thousands of protesters broke police barriers blocking the President’s House where Rajapaksa has been housed since late March when the island-wide protests raged calling for his resignation.
At least seven persons, including 2 policemen, were injured and admitted to the Colombo national hospital on Saturday, officials said.
The police fired tear gas at two access roads to the President’s House — Chatham Street and Lotus Road, but the defiant protesters continued unabated.
The protesters also clashed with the railway authorities at provincial towns of Galle, Kandy, and Matara as the demonstrators forced authorities to operate trains to Colombo.
Large contingents of police, special task force, and the Army had been deployed around the area.
The organisers of the movement Whole country to Colombo’ said people were walking from the suburbs to join the protesters at Colombo Fort.
Protesters said they won’t relent until Rajapaksa quits the presidency.
Sri Lankan Police had earlier in the day lifted the curfew imposed in seven divisions in the country’s Western Province, including Colombo, ahead of the planned anti-government protests, after coming under sustained pressure from top lawyers’ associations, human rights groups, and political parties.
The curfew was imposed in seven police divisions in the Western Province, which included Negombo, Kelaniya, Nugegoda, Mount Lavinia, Colombo North, Colombo South, and Colombo Central with effect from 9 pm on Friday night until further notice, police said.
“People living in the areas where police curfew had been enforced should strictly limit themselves to their houses and law would be enforced severely against those violating curfew,” the Inspector General of Police (IGP) C.D. Wickramaratne announced on Friday.
The Bar Association of Sri Lanka protested the police curfew, terming it illegal and a violation of fundamental rights.
Such curfew is blatantly illegal and a violation of the fundamental rights of the people of our country who are protesting against President Gotabaya Rajapakse and his Government over its failure to protect their basic rights, it said.
The body cautioned that the curfew intended to stifle freedom of expression and dissent, which would gravely harm Sri Lanka’s economy and its social, political, and international standing.
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka called the police curfew a gross violation of human rights.
The Human Rights Commission informs that the imposition of police curfew arbitrarily by the inspector general of police is illegal.
It directs the IGP to recall this illegal order which is a gross violation of the fundamental rights of the people immediately, it said in a statement.
On Friday, police in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo imposed a curfew after firing tear gas and water cannons on student protesters ahead of a weekend rally, as public outrage escalated over the island nation’s worst economic crisis in seven decades.
The police curfew was imposed to quell the weekend protest rally march to Colombo from around the country is planned over the weekend by religious leaders, political parties, medical practitioners, teachers, civil rights activists, farmers, and fishermen on Saturday demanding the resignation of the President as well as Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
They blame Rajapaksa for the country’s economic malaise, the worst since independence in 1948.
Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million, is under the grip of an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, crippled by an acute shortage of foreign exchange that has left it struggling to pay for essential imports of fuel, and other essentials.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung on Friday urged the country’s military and police to allow peaceful protests.
“Violence is not an answer. Chaos & force will not fix the economy or bring the political stability that Sri Lankans need right now,” she said in a tweet.
Political and economic instability could potentially derail Sri Lanka’s much-awaited USD 3 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned analysts.
Last week, Wickremesinghe announced in Parliament that Sri Lanka would present a debt restructuring programme to the IMF by August to secure a bailout package while underlining that negotiations with the global lender were more complex and difficult than in the past because the country was bankrupt.
The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.
Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.
(With PTI and AFP Inputs)
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