As the United Nations chief planned to set up an advisory panel on alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka, Premier Ratnasiri Wickremanayake has accused "certain" western nations of interfering in his country's affairs and said government would only "bow down" to people's decisions.
"Certain European countries are under the impression that Sri Lanka is still a colony," he said, addressing an election rally at Puttalam in northwest Sri Lanka on Monday. These nations "should not teach us how to rule this (Sri Lanka) country," the prime minister was quoted as saying by the state-owned media.
"We are an independent and sovereign nation and we have self respect as a nation," he said. The island nation's government would only "bow down to the decisions of its own people," Wickremanayke said. "Sri Lanka is a signatory of the Vienna Convention in this respect (non-interference in internal affairs of other countries). It is the masses who would take decisions of the incidents taking place