A convoy of buses carrying Muslim voters in northern Sri Lanka is attacked by gunfire and stones and blocked by burning tires hours before polls opened in presidential elections.
Security personnel patrol outside a polling station during the country's presidential election in Weerawila, Sri Lanka, Saturday, Nov. 16 , 2019. A convoy of buses carrying Muslim voters traveling in northern Sri Lanka was attacked by gunfire and stones, and blocked by burning tires, around midnight on Saturday hours before polls opened in Sri Lanka’s presidential election, according to Colombo-based Centre for Monitoring Election Violence.
Campaigning for Sri Lanka’s seventh presidential election was dominated by worries over national security in the backdrop of the deadly Islamic State-inspired suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday that killed 269 people. At the same time, there’s fear among both Tamils and Muslims about a return to power of front-runner Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a hard-line former defense official under his brother, ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The ex-rebel commander Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan broke away from the Tamil Tigers in 2004 and worked with the government to defeat the rebel group. His split helped the government end a 26-year separatist insurgency. Premadasa’s supporters organized the convoy of Muslims who had fled their homes in the northern district of Mannar in 1982, when the Tamil insurgency began to grow. A large number of Muslims also were evicted from the north in 1990.
A decade of peace following nearly 30 years of civil war was shattered earlier this year when homegrown militants pledging loyalty to the Islamic State group detonated suicide bombs at three churches and three hotels on April 21. Rajapaksa, 71, cast himself as the only candidate capable of protecting Sri Lankans from such attacks.
Premadasa, the son of a former president who was assassinated by a Tamil Tiger suicide bombing, has gained support in recent weeks by promising to expand welfare programs and bringing disgruntled party stalwarts into the fold.
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