File photograph.
A Sri Lankan minister has sparked controversy and a backlash from Germany after claiming that “6.9 million people who voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa wanted him to be a Hitler”, when speaking about the Sri Lankan president’s 2019 election victory.
Dilum Amunugama, Sri Lanka’s transport minister, added that “even I accept that”, and that “when he [Gotabaya Rajapaksa] fails to do so, they criticise him”.
The minister’s comments come following the increased harassment and intimidation of Tamil and Muslim civil society members which have been described as “fascist” in nature by Tamil parliamentarians.
His remarks marked a response from Germany’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, who tweeted “let me remind those voices that Adolf Hitler was responsible for human suffering and despair beyond imagination, with millions of deaths”.
“Definitely no role model for any politician!” Holger Seubert added.
I‘m hearing claims that “a Hitler“ could be beneficial to Sri Lanka today. Let me remind those voices that Adolf Hitler was responsible for human suffering and despair beyond imagination, with millions of deaths. Definitely no role model for any politician!
— Ambassador Holger Seubert (@GermanAmbColo) April 13, 2021
Rajapaksa, an accused war criminal and self-proclaimed strongman of Sri Lanka is emblematic of the violent nature of the Sinhala-Buddhist state. Last week Rajapaksa visited Vavuniya where he expressed the importance of protecting the “ideology” and “force” that brought him into power.
This is not the first time that Rajapaksa has been compared to the Adof Hitler.
In 2019, Sri Lanka’s former Finance and Media Minister, Mangala Samaraweera said Rajapaksa's policy to banish beggars from cities to "Hitler's compulsory sterilisation and concentration camps for disabled people."
In the same year, Vaiko, leader of Tamil Nadu Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) party warned that “what happened in Nazi Hitler’s time in Germany and Poland, is happening today in Sri Lanka,”
Tamil activists and politicians from around the world have similarly compared Sri Lanka’s genocidal actions to that of the Nazi regime.
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