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Armed soldiers ordered Muslim civilians to raise their hands in the air while kneeling on a street in the town of Eravur, about 300 kilometers east of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo.
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Local residents said they found the army’s orders demeaning and humiliating. While officials admit that military forces do not have the authority to impose such a sentence.
The civilians forced to kneel in the street were originally on their way to two restaurants to buy food.
“The Military Police’s initial investigation has started after certain photos went viral depicting alleged abuse in the Eravur area,” the Sri Lankan military said in a statement as quoted. AFP.
The official in charge has been removed and the soldiers involved were ordered to leave the city.
“The army will apply the most stringent disciplinary measures against all guilty military personnel,” the military statement added.
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Sri Lanka is under a month-long lockdown to contain the third wave of infections with the SARS COv-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The death toll from the virus has more than quadrupled to 2,531 since mid-April.
The military, which faces war crimes charges in the decades-long Tamil separatist war that ended in 2009, has been deployed to help police and health authorities enforce movement restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.
Successive governments have denied that troops killed some 40,000 civilians in the final stages of the separatist war, which claimed more than 100,000 lives in total between 1972 and 2009.
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