President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has questioned the thinking behind opposition groups adopting unusual protest methods, including inserting pins into clay figures, the Daily Mirror reported.
The President was addressing the National Convention of the National Intellectuals Organization (NIO) on Saturday.
He said groups that had benefited from the previous political culture were struggling to accept the changes introduced by the National People’s Power (NPP) government.
The President accused those groups of responding to the government’s reforms with hateful statements, fabricated claims and what he described as bizarre protest activities.
Referring specifically to the practice of inserting pins into clay figures, he questioned how anyone could believe that harming a clay figure would cause pain to another person, and criticised attempts to use such methods as a form of political protest.
Context
The remarks address a form of ritual protest that has appeared in Sri Lankan political demonstrations, in which effigies or clay figures representing political figures are pierced with pins. The President’s framing treats the practice as evidence of the opposition’s lack of a substantive argument rather than as a security concern.
The National Intellectuals Organization is a professional and academic grouping aligned with the NPP, and its national convention is a friendly platform rather than a neutral one.
Not reported
The filing does not identify which opposition groups or individuals carried out the pin-sticking protests, when or where they took place, or who the clay figures were intended to represent. It does not include direct quotations beyond the paraphrased remarks, does not record any opposition response, and does not indicate whether the government intends to take any action in relation to the protests.