Sri Lanka's President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Mahinda Rajapaksa, on the occasion of Esala Perahera, the Sri Lankan Buddhist festival that commemorates the scared tooth of Buddha, has granted an special amnesty for 1,933 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) deserters including SLA officers released from several prisons, Sri Lankan police authorities said on Tuesday, July 28 .
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Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan military offered another amnesty to the tens of thousands deserters.
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said troops who were absent without leave could report back to their units and be officially discharged without penalty.
"They must bring all their documents and return whatever is due to the army and then they will be granted an honourable discharge," Nanayakkara told AFP.
In 2001, the army had about 51,000 deserters on its books. According to a Sri Lankan Ministry of Justice and Law Reforms official, there are over 65,000 deserters at large.
The latest amnesty offers comes 2 months after government forces ended the island's bloody civil war. Despite the end of the fighting, the military wants to recruit new troops to fill vacancies and to be deployed in areas of the north and east captured from the Tamil Tigers.
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