Telegraph.co.uk - China’s malign influence in Sri Lanka
by Peter Foster
The democratically elected Government of Sri Lanka has once again displayed its intolerance of any opposition by arresting Sarath Fonseka, the retired army general who stood against the incumbent president Mahinda Rajapakse at the recent election.
My colleague Dean Nelson gives a graphic account today of the violent detention of Gen Fonseka (retd) by a group of soldiers who dragged him off to an unknown place of detention.
This is the latest in a series of ugly developments in Sri Lanka which, over the last three or four years as the country has slid ever closer to becoming an authoritarian state under the chauvinist Rajapakse presidency.
Dissent against the government is increasingly not tolerated. Sri Lanka is now one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, as was graphically demonstrated a year ago with the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge whose letter from “beyond the grave” I posted at the time. If you have not read it before, I urge you to do so.
What does any of this have to do with China? Well, a lot really since the People’s Democratic Dictatorship of China is actively bankrolling the emergence of a new “People’s dictatorship” in Colombo that highlights the increasingly malign influence of China in global affairs.
Sri Lanka might be too small to “matter” but to see a South Asian democracy like Sri Lanka morphing into a corrupt, self-serving authoritarian state with the support of the Chinese state is a legitimate cause for concern. More
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