COLOMBO: Police said Saturday they arrested a Sri Lankan trade union leader who allegedly took two official flags from the deposed president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s palace and used them as a bedsheet and a sarong.
Tens of thousands of people, incensed by the island nation’s economic crisis, stormed Rajapaksa’s residence and seafront office earlier this month, forcing the leader to flee the country and later resign.
The man’s arrest on Friday night comes after a social media post showed him using one of the official presidential flags as a bedsheet and the other as a sarong, a police officer told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
“We identified him from the videos filmed and posted by his son,” the officer said.
“He told investigators that he burnt one flag and we have recovered the one he used as a sarong.”
The man was remanded in custody for two weeks pending further investigations, the officer added.
Sri Lanka’s 22 million people have endured months of lengthy blackouts, record inflation and shortages of food, fuel and petrol.
Rajapaksa had been blamed by protesters for mismanaging the nation’s finances and public anger had simmered for months before the mass demonstrations that forced his ouster.
Soon after protesters overran the Presidential Palace, there were social media posts of them frolicking in the presidential pool and bouncing on four-poster beds inside the sprawling compound.
The nearby Temple Trees compound, the official prime minister’s residence, was also overrun on the same day and protesters had removed televisions and other valuables.
Police said an inventory was being taken at the colonial-era buildings which are repositories of valuable art and antiquities.
But protesters also turned over to authorities around 17.5 million rupees ($46,000) in crisp banknotes that had been found in one of the presidential palace’s rooms.
Rajapaksa’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has vowed a tough line on “trouble-makers” and police have arrested several protest leaders in recent days.
Parliament extended a state of emergency this week, giving the military sweeping powers to maintain order and detain suspects for long periods.
The military last week demolished a protest camp outside the president’s office that had campaigned for Rajapaksa’s ouster — a move that drew international condemnation accusing troops of using excessive force on unarmed demonstrators.
Sri Lanka police arrest man for stealing president's flags
https://arab.news/9gtgh
Sri Lanka police arrest man for stealing president's flags
- The man’s arrest comes after social media post showed him using one of the official presidential flags as a bedsheet
- The man was remanded in custody for two weeks pending further investigations
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
