Sri Lanka clears 19 citizens branded as traitors by British

Sri Lanka’s president has revoked a nearly 200-year-old British colonial order, clearing the names of 19 citizens who were branded as traitors for rebelling against British rule, his office said Friday.
President Maithripala Sirisena rescinded the order and declared the 19 people to be “patriotic war heroes who fought for the freedom of the motherland,” a statement from the president’s office said.
The order issued by then-British Gov. Robert Brownrigg in January 1818 listed the names of the 19 people, including Monarawila Keppetipola Disawe, who was a high-ranking official of the country’s last kingdom before it was defeated by the British.
Keppetipola Disawe and other leaders of the rebellion were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. He is known for exceptional courage he showed at the moment of his execution.
Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, was ruled by Britain from 1815 to 1948, when it regained independence.
Groups from the ethnic majority Sinhalese have been urging successive governments to scrap the British decrees against those who fought against colonial rule.
Sirisena, Keppetipola and the other 18 people belong to the Sinhalese community.
Also on Friday, the president’s offices said half of the country’s public procurement contracts are tainted by bribery and corruption, nearly two years after he came to power promising to tackle government graft.
Sirisena, who has ordered investigations into alleged widespread corruption under his predecessor, said he could not name names because those exposed would “go on strike from tomorrow.”
“I regret to say that organized bribery and corruption is still taking place in government institutions,” he told a public meeting of police and anti-corruption activists in Colombo.
“We say call tenders to prevent corruption, but in reality we know that the tender procedures are also corrupt. It happens in over 50 percent of the time.”
Sirisena said one government institution had threatened to go on strike to protest against the installation of a CCTV system designed to discourage money changing hands illegally.

Source: Arab News