With violent protest against his arrest continuing across Sri Lanka, former Sri Lankan Army Commander Gen Sarath Fonseka appealed to the public and army troops not to get provoked, his wife, Anoma Fonseka, told media here on Thursday.
“He wanted me to convey to the people, and especially the troops, to remain calm and not to be provoked by his illegal arrest,” Anoma said.
“They are trying to break his spirit, but they won’t succeed,” she asserted.
Anoma, who is emerging as a rallying point for the Opposition and anti-Rajapaksa forces in Sri Lanka, visited her husband along with his lawyer, Wijedasa Rajapaksa, at the naval detention centre here. She said that the meeting with her husband had taken place while armed guards looked on.
It is ironical that Fonseka should be kept in the naval detention centre considering the fact that, when he was army chief, he had kept hammering the navy and its chief, Adm Wasantha Karannagoda, for not doing enough to stop LTTE from procuring arms from abroad by sea. Fonseka had insisted that the army, and not the other services, had won the war against the LTTE. His other refrain was that he was not getting as much security as Karannagoda.
The public reaction to Fonseka’s arrest has been muted except for some stone throwing incidents and use of teargas by the police in Amparai, Galle and Maharagama on the outskirts of Colombo.
Most people refrain from expressing an opinion, even in Colombo, a stronghold of the opposition United National Party, which had backed Fonseka in the presidential election.
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