One thousand Sri Lanka prisoners have been released by the President Ranil Wickremesinghe to mark the island’s main Buddhist holiday.
According to AFP the prisons chief said the order came on Saturday.
The pardons on Vesak Day, which commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death, applied only to those convicted of minor offences, said Commissioner-General Thushara Upuldeniya.” We released these inmates from 28 prisons across the country,”
There were 982 men and six women who walked free.”
The cash-strapped South Asian nation is holding official Vesak celebrations for the first time in five years.
Festivities were cancelled in 2019 after Islamic extremists carried out Easter Sunday suicide bombings that claimed 279 lives at churches and hotels in the capital Colombo.
Official events marking the holiday were then put on hold by the Covid-19 pandemic and last year’s economic crisis, the worst since independence from Britain in 1948.
