Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister stressed to Parliament yesterday that the government had not made any plans to reduce the number of military personnel or camps in the North-East.
Responding to a question about a Sri Lankan Army circular indicating the removal of certain personnel and camps, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe claimed that the Army made its own decisions on numbers.
“In this country, the Army is led by the officers of the force with different ranks, including generals and colonels among many others. We have not decided to scale down. The Army should tell us the number of camps they want and the locations they want,” the Prime Minister said, according to FT.lk.
Tamils have consistently called for the demilitarisation of the North-East, a call echoed in the UN Human Rights Council resolution co-sponsored by the Sri Lankan government, and backed by the wider community.
Local politicians and government bodies have also called for and begun taking action to demilitarise the Tamil homeland, such as banning certain military-run business ventures.
