(Colombo) Sri Lankan police dispersed hundreds of student demonstrators in Colombo on Saturday, as all protest movements near major institutions, including the presidency, and the homes of senior army officials, having been banned the day before by the President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Posted at 12:23 p.m.
Police in riot gear stopped the student parade hours after the government declared the city center a “high security zone”, banning demonstrations in the surrounding area.
Police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse protesters demanding the release of activists arrested and detained under draconian anti-terrorism laws.
PHOTO ISHARA S. KODIKARA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A police officer stumbles as a riot squad leads the charge.
According to witnesses, dozens of demonstrators were arrested during this rally.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has taken a very hard line against activists who forced his predecessor, deposed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee abroad and resign from office under pressure from protests amid chaos economic.
The Sri Lankan bar, very influential in the country, condemned the ban on demonstrations, saying that it seriously compromised the freedoms of expression and assembly.
The edict aims “to significantly restrict the freedoms of citizens, without any reasonable or legal basis”, the bar association said.
The country of 22 million people has been rocked for months by a historic economic crisis, marked by severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine, due to a lack of foreign currency to finance imports of essential products.
At the height of the protest movement, thousands of demonstrators stormed the official residence of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July, forcing him to take refuge abroad from where he announced his resignation.
Shortly after Mr. Wickremesinghe took power, the army dismantled a site occupied by the demonstrators in front of the presidency and arrested hundreds of people who had taken part in the demonstrations.
Police say three student movement leaders have been detained under anti-terrorism laws, while the others arrested have been released on bail.
Mr. Rajapaksa returned to Sri Lanka in early September, and has since lived under government protection, while opponents have demanded that he be brought to justice for crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s interminable civil war and corruption in the country. when he was in power.