Police claimed they detained a trade union representative from Sri Lanka on Saturday after he reportedly stole two official flags from the residence of the ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and used them as a bedsheet and sarong.
Rajapaksa was forced to flee the country and eventually resign after tens of thousands of angry citizens assaulted his home and office on the seashore earlier this month.
On requesting anonymity, a police officer spoke about the man’s detention on Friday night in response to a social media post that showed him along with one of the actual presidential flags as a blanket and the other as a sarong.
“We identified him from the videos filmed and posted by his son. He told investigators that he burnt one flag and we have recovered the one he used as a sarong.”
-anonymous officer.
The officer continues, “The individual was detained in detention for two weeks for additional investigations.”
The 22 million residents of Sri Lanka have faced months-long outages, record inflation, and shortages of food, fuel, and gasoline.
Before the large-scale protests that led to Rajapaksa’s overthrow, the people had been angry for months over his alleged mismanagement of the country’s finances.
Social media photos showed protestors splashing about in the presidential pool and jumping on four-poster mattresses within the expansive grounds surfaced shortly after they overran the Presidential Palace.
On the same day, demonstrators also overran the neighbouring Temple Trees complex, the formal prime minister’s house, and took televisions and other belongings with them.
According to the police, an inventory was being done at the colonial-era structures, which include priceless works of art and artefacts.
However, demonstrators also handed up to law enforcement around 17.5 million rupees ($46,000) in clean banknotes that were discovered in a chamber of the presidential palace.
This week, the national emergency was extended by Parliament, giving the military broad authority to uphold the peace and hold suspects for lengthy periods of time.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapaksa’s successor, has pledged to take a harsh stance against “trouble-makers,” and police have recently detained a number of protest leaders.
An anti-Rajapaksa protest campsite just outside of the president’s office was destroyed by the military last week, prompting criticism from across the world for the use of disproportionate force against defenseless protesters.
image credits: adaderana
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