Police side with Sri Lankan protesters
COLOMBO: Thousands of anti-government protesters stormed into Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office as police fired tear gas into the baying crowd before abandoning their post.
Mr Wickremesinghe announced a nationwide state of emergency and an immediate curfew after the protesters breached military defences and entered his office to raise national flags late on Wednesday, local time, after he was named acting president.
Highly trained paramilitary police held off the protesters who swarmed around the colonial compound for four hours.
The crowd, mainly young men, rattled the fences and climbed sentry boxes guarding the office. Tear gas was fired. Choking and retching, the protesters hurled the canisters back. And when they pulled away a section of fence and climbed in, the police abandoned their defence.
“A lot of these police sympathise with us – they understand that we’re doing this for them as well as for ourselves,” Jeana De Zoysa, one of a small number of female protesters, said.
“Some of the police were crying. They were deliberately firing the tear gas high. Some were even whispering to our guys, telling them the weak points in the fence.”
Mr Wickremesinghe in a televised address said he had instructed security forces to restore order, but troops were seen backing down at his office, leaving the gates open for protesters to stroll in.
“I have ordered military commanders and the police chief to do what is necessary to restore order,” Mr Wickremesinghe said.
“Those who stormed into my office want to stop me from discharging my responsibilities as acting president.”
His private home was set ablaze on Saturday.
“We can’t tear up our constitution. We can’t allow fascists to take over. We must end this fascist threat to democracy,” he said adding that the state buildings occupied by protesters must be returned to state custody.
Protesters also broke into Sri Lanka’s main state television station on Wednesday and briefly took over broadcasts, footage showed.
An unidentified man barged into the studio of the Rupavahini network during a live program and ordered that only protest-related news should be broadcast. The transmission was cut off.
The protesters’ actions were a repeat of Saturday’s capture of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s palace and office, which forced him to eventually flee the country to the Maldives on Wednesday.
Since his election in 2019, Mr Rajapaksa had become a hated figure for many Sri Lankans for his mishandling of the economy, which has left the country unable to pay its debts and facing rising prices and shortages of food, fuel and essential medicines.
Mr Rajapaksa’s flight into exile might have been a moment of triumph for the protesters, except for one detail. The man who takes over as acting president is Mr Rajapaksa’s equally mistrusted long-time ally.
Parliament will convene next week to choose an interim president who will serve out the rest of Mr Rajapaksa’s term of office. However, Rajapaksa’s party, the Sri Lanka People’s Front, dominates the parliament.