Gandhi Statue Attacked, Sri Lanka Opens Probe
Sri Lanka ordered a probe Saturday into the attacks on the statues of Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi and Britain's founder of the Scout movement Robert Baden-Powell, the foreign ministry said.
There had been no claim of responsibility for Friday's destruction, which occurred amid anti-Western protests after the UN human rights council adopted a US-led resolution urging Sri Lanka to probe alleged war crimes by its troops.
"The Inspector General of Police has been instructed to carry out an immediate and thorough investigation into these incidents to identify motives and culprits behind these acts of vandalism," the ministry said.
Attackers beheaded the statues of Gandhi and Baden-Powell in the town of Batticaloa, 300 kilometers (187 miles) east of Colombo and damaged two other statues of a poet and a religious leader.
Baden-Powell had visited Sri Lanka twice after Scouting was introduced in this former British colony in 1912.
Anti-Western graffiti appeared in many parts of the country after the UNHRC adopted a US-led resolution urging Sri Lanka to probe alleged war crimes committed by its troops while crushing Tamil rebels in 2009.
Demonstrations denouncing the United States and its allies, backed by senior figures in the cabinet, were also held across the country.
Neighboring India, which had previously supported Sri Lanka, sided with the West in voting for the resolution. Several local media have criticized India after the UNHRC vote.
Human rights groups say that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of Sri Lanka's ethnic war, which ended in May 2009, but the government has insisted that none was killed by its troops.
The UN estimates that up to 100,000 people were killed in the conflict between 1972 and 2009.
Source: Agence France Presse
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