Colombo, August 13: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has called out the armed forces to maintain public order using the powers vested in him by Chapter 40 of the Public Security Ordinance (PSO).
Gazette No. 1717/41 of August 6 reads: “By virtue of the powers vested in me by Section 12 of the Public Sector Ordinance (Chap 40), I, Mahinda Rajapaksa, do by this order, call out all the members of the armed forces specified in the First Schedule hereto, for the maintenance of public order in the areas specified in the Second Schedule.”
The armed forces listed in the First Schedule are the Sri Lanka army, navy and air force. All the 25 districts of the country find a place in the Second Schedule.
The move has been criticised by opposition United National Party MP and Indian Tamil trade union leader Ramaiah Yogarajan as a “further step towards the militarisation of Sri Lanka.”
“Law and order should be left to the police. It is not the army’s job,” he told Express on Friday. He said the notification had been issued three days before the Emergency regulations were debated and passed in Parliament, perhaps to justify the continuation of the Emergency.
The measure also did not gel with Prime Minister D M Jayaratne’s assurance to Parliament on August 9 that the Emergency regulations would be whittled down if approved by the National Security Council, to which they had been submitted.
‘Indian-origin Locals
Attacked in Ratnapura’
There have been a number of reports of “strange men” assaulting poor men and women in the upcountry plantation areas populated by Indian-origin estate workers and also in the Muslim villages in eastern province.
According to Yogarajan, recently, seven women were found dead in Ratnapura district, but the cases had not been solved.
—Agencies