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Hundreds of students demonstrate in Colombo to demand the release of activists arrested during last year’s anti-government protests.
Authorities in Sri Lanka fired tear gas and water cannons at hundreds of students protesting in the capital demanding the release of those arrested during last year’s anti-government protests.
The demonstrators said on Wednesday that the detention of dozens of students and activists amounted to political persecution.
Sri Lanka witnessed unprecedented months of demonstrations last year sparked by the country’s worst-ever economic crisis.
Mass protests in the South Asian island nation of 22 million resulted in the resignation and short flight of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez, reporting from the outskirts of the capital Colombo, said “bursts of tear gas and water cannons” were fired at the students.
She said the government “went way too far” to stop the protests.
“University students have said that this kind of government repression will not stop and silence them,” she said.
“They say the government’s campaign is to repress people and silence their voice, to stop the university movement involved in the anti-government movement we saw last year that led to a change of government,” she added please.
While Fernandez was on live broadcast, she and the Al Jazeera cameraman were also hit by tear gas and a water cannon.
Earlier this year, seven human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged Sri Lanka to release a prominent student activist and expressed concern over an anti-terrorism law that routinely denied bail to those arrested last year.