International human rights group are urging Sri Lanka’s new president to immediately order security forces to cease all unlawful use of force against protesters who have been demonstrating against the government over the country’s economic meltdown.
A day after President Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn, hundreds of armed troops raided a protest camp outside the president’s office in the early hours of Friday, attacking demonstrators with batons. Human Rights Watch said the action “sends a dangerous message to the Sri Lankan people that the new government intends to act through brute force rather than the rule of law.”
“The protesters have a right to demonstrate peacefully. Excessive use of force, intimidation and unlawful arrests seem to be an endlessly repetitive pattern in which the Sri Lankan authorities respond to dissent and peaceful assembly,” said Kyle Ward, the group’s deputy secretary general. Armed troops and police arrived in trucks and buses on Friday to clear the main protest camp the capital, Colombo, even though protesters had announced they would vacate the site voluntarily.
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