The political turmoil has threatened to make a rescue from the International Monetary Fund more difficult. Heavy security was present outside the president’s office at midday. “Actions that stifle protests and the right to peaceful assembly can worsen economic and political instability in Sri Lanka,” Singer-Hamdy said. Ambassador Julie Chung also expressed concern. resident coordinator to Sri Lanka, expressed grave concern over the use of force and U.S. “A cowardly assault against PEACEFUL protestors, who agreed to vacate the sites today A useless display of ego and brute force putting innocent lives at risk & endangers Sri Lanka’s international image, at a critical juncture," he wrote on Twitter. The leader of the political opposition, Sajith Premadasa, also denounced the raid. “The use of the Armed Forces to suppress civilian protests on the very first day in office of the new President is despicable and will have serious consequences on our country’s social, economic and political stability,” the Bar Association said in a statement. They included both protesters and lawyers, according to the Bar Association. In all, eight people, including some protesters, were injured, some badly, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give the information to the media. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka, the main lawyers’ body in the country, said the lawyers who were assaulted had gone to the protest site to offer their counsel. They removed tents and blocked roads leading to the site. Starting at around midnight, army troops and police arrived in trucks and buses to clear the main protest camp near the presidential palace in the capital, Colombo, where demonstrators have gathered for the past 104 days. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but the former president acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to Sri Lanka’s crisis. The protesters accuse Rajapaksa and his powerful family of siphoning money from government coffers and of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. Overnight, just hours after he was sworn in, he issued a notice under the state of emergency calling on the armed forces to maintain law and order nationwide - clearing the way for the move against the protest camp. On Monday, when he was acting president, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency giving him the power to change or suspend laws and giving authorities broad power to search premises and detain people. On Friday, he appointed as prime minister a Rajapaksa ally, Dinesh Gunawardena, who is 73 and from a prominent political family.Īfter his election in a parliamentary vote this week, Wickremesinghe told lawmakers that the people “are not expecting the old politics from us.” But his recent moves signaled an inclination to maintain the status quo. Wickremesinghe, who had been prime minister, was elevated to president by lawmakers this week - apparently seen as a safe pair of hands to lead Sri Lanka out of the crisis, even though he, too, was a target of the demonstrations. After they stormed the presidential palace and other government buildings earlier this month, then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the last two decades, fled and resigned. Sri Lankans have taken to the streets for months demanding their leaders resign over an economic crisis that has left the island nation’s 22 million people short of essentials like medicine, food and fuel. Adding to signs that President Ranil Wickremesinghe would not address the concerns of protesters, he chose a prime minister on Friday with close ties to the political establishment that the demonstrators blame for the country's collapse.
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