Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Attack probed as Sri Lankans choose next leader
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Polls closed Saturday evening after a day of voting for Sri Lanka’s next president, but an attack on a convoy of Muslims heading to cast their ballots raised concerns of what some called a coordinated effort to disenfranchise the minority group.
There were no reported injuries in the convoy attack, and police were investigating, said Manjula Gajanayake, spokesman for the Colombo-based Center for Monitoring Election Violence.
The center said there were reports elsewhere of minor election-law violations, such as supporters influencing voters near polling stations and distributing mock ballots with party symbols.
After polls closed, Elections Commission chairman Mahinda Deshappriya said there were “no serious incidents of violence.”
Campaigning in Sri Lanka’s presidential race was dominated by worries over national security, which was pushed to the forefront after deadly Islamic State-inspired suicide bombings on Easter Sunday killed 269 people.
At the same time, there’s fear among both Muslims and ethnic Tamils about a return to power of front-runner Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a hard-line former defense official under his brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The Rajapaksa brothers are revered by Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority for defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009 and ending the nation’s long-running civil war. But because of their heavy-handed rule during and after the war, some minority groups dread their return.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been widely expected to triumph over the ruling-party candidate, Housing Minister Sajith Premadasa.
But as the election approached, the race became very close.
Nearly 16 million of the country’s 22 million people were eligible to vote and choose a new president from a record 35 candidates. President Maithripala Sirisena, who was elected in 2015, is not seeking reelection.
Results are expected as early as today. Deshappriya estimated turnout at 80%.
The Muslims who were attacked Saturday were part of a convoy organized by Premadasa’s supporters to take them back to vote in the northern district of Mannar. Many Muslims fled the area in 1982, when the Tamil insurgency began to grow, and others were evicted from the north in 1990.
The Elections Commission had encouraged them to register as voters in Mannar but had not arranged enough transportation to take them from their homes in the northwestern district of Puttalam, Gajanayake said.
As they were heading to vote, they were shot at, pelted with stones and blocked by burning tires.
“There is a concerted effort to keep the Muslims away from the ballot box,” said Ratnajeevan Hoole, a member of the Elections Commission.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether any of the attackers had been arrested.
Shreen Saroor, an activist working with displaced Muslims, said the attack made them more determined to vote, adding that they were using public transportation and private vehicles to get to the polling stations in Mannar.
“Very happy to say that no one was injured, only the tire of the bus. And these voters, they have traveled there and they have voted without any obstruction,” said Deshappriya, the election commissioner.