‘My only house set on fire, it had 200-year-old paintings and 2,500 books’: Sri Lankan PM

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe spoke in public for the first time on Monday, after anti-government demonstrators set fire to his private home on Saturday, saying that only those with a ‘Hitler-like mindset’ set fire to buildings.

Wickremesinghe stated in a special televised address that the status of the economy was the reason he accepted the position of Prime Minister.

In response to the demonstrators’ Saturday night arson assault on his home, he added that only persons with a ‘Hitler-like mindset’ torch buildings and a ‘background event’ led to what happened that night. He said that the fire assault on his home was caused by a misunderstanding caused by a Muslim party leader’s tweet, in which he stated that he had objected to the formation of an all-party administration and refused to quit.

A television station incited the populace to surround his residence, despite the fact that he rectified it by declaring he would be prepared to resign following the formation of an all-party government. He had pleaded with the TV network to refrain from encouraging the demonstrators to assault his home.

He said that he cancelled all the meetings scheduled on July 9 in favour of staying at home and the police afterwards requested him to leave as their may have a disturbance. The Prime Minister claimed that as a result, he and his wife left the house in the evening.

According to Wickremesinghe, this home was the only one he owned in Sri Lanka and it has been burnt down. ‘My only house was set on fire. I had 2,500 books in my library, my only asset. There were over 200-year-old valuable paintings. All of them destroyed’, he said.

He added that he and his wife had made a deal to give all the priceless books they had amassed over the years to a college in Sri Lanka and another international organisation.

Wickremesinghe was named Prime Minister by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in May, following the resignation of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was compelled to step down due to the government’s mishandling of the economy.