The Sri Lankan government, headed by accused war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa, dropped the Tamil national anthem at Independence Day celebrations in Colombo yesterday, for the first time since 2016.
The government announced that the 72nd Independence Day celebrations of Sri Lanka would be sung only in Sinhalese a reversal of a policy by the previous regime in 2015, who had included the Tamil version.
Mano Ganesan, former minister of national integration that by "rejecting the anthem in Tamil... in front of local and the international community, the government has justified discrimination".
See more from AFP here.
Whilst celebrations took place in Colombo, Tamils across the North-East took part in protests.
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