Three former presidents of Sri Lanka yesterday expressed solidarity with jailed former Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe and condemned his incarceration as a “calculated assault” on democracy.
The trio, former political rivals of Wickremesinghe — president between July 2022 and September last year — said the charges against him were frivolous.
He has been accused of using US$55,000 in state funds for a stopover in the UK while returning home after a G77 summit in Havana and the UN General Assembly in New York in September 2023.
Photo: AFP
Wickremesinghe, 76, was rushed to the intensive care unit of the main state-run hospital in Colombo on Saturday, a day after being remanded in custody.
Doctors said he was experiencing from severe dehydration on top of acute diabetes and high blood pressure.
“What we are witnessing is a calculated onslaught on the very essence of our democratic values,” former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga said in a statement.
The 80-year-old Kumaratunga said the consequences of Wickremesinghe’s jailing would go beyond the fate of an individual and could affect the rights of all citizens.
“I join wholeheartedly in expressing my unreserved opposition to these initiatives, which all political leaders are duty-bound to resist,” Kumaratunga added.
Her successor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, 79, also expressed solidarity with Wickremesinghe and visited him in prison on Saturday, shortly before he was moved to intensive care.
Maithripala Sirisena, 73, who sacked Wickremesinghe from the prime minister’s post in October 2018 before being forced by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court to reinstate him 52 days later, described the jailing as a witch hunt.
“What we are seeing is a systematic campaign to silence opponents of the new government,” Sirisena said. “They are polishing the lid of a coffin to bury democracy.”
Wickremesinghe’s United National Party on Saturday said it believed he was being prosecuted out of fear that he could stage a comeback.
He lost the presidential election in September to Anura Kumara Dissanayake, but has remained politically active despite holding no elected office.
Wickremesinghe was arrested as part of Dissanayake’s campaign against endemic corruption in the island nation, which is emerging from its worst economic meltdown in 2022.
He has maintained that his wife’s travel expenses in Britain were met by her personally and that no state funds were used.
Wickremesinghe became president in July 2022 after then-Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa stepped down following months of street protests fueled by the economic crisis.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS