On 21 September 2024, the people of this country made an extremely courageous decision. They decided to completely defeat the political camps that had governed our country alternately for a long period of time and hand over the country to the leadership of the National People’s Power. That was an extremely important decision. But it did not end there. At the subsequent general election, the people gave us a strong government with the highest number of elected Members of Parliament and the highest number of votes.

How did we form this government? We did not have the financial power to throw money around and form governments as was done in the past. We did not have media power to use the media to spread false propaganda. Nor did we have the power to use state power to manipulate elections. For the first time in the history of Sri Lanka, without money power, media power or political power, ordinary people came forward and, representing their own people’s power, established this people-centred government. It was the people who elected this government; it is the people who will take this government forward; and it is the people who will protect this government.

Why did the people make such a decision? The groups that had governed our country for a long time had inflicted every possible form of destruction on the country. They had destroyed the entire system to such an extent that nothing sacred had been left untouched. Eventually, the people took to the streets and began to shout, and the rulers were forced to flee the country. There had never been such a history in Sri Lanka, where the people took to the streets and drove out the rulers. Therefore, the people of this country expected that, by handing power to the National People’s Power, this entire destruction would be changed and the country directed towards a correct and better path. They did not come seeking personal benefits. Everyone expected the government of the National People’s Power to create a better country and a better future for our children.

This country existed entirely as a ‘black state’. There were black stains everywhere. Politics was black politics, the economy was a black economy, and the law and executive dominance had become a black law that had run amok. Black racist slogans that created conflicts among the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities had spread everywhere. Before the world, our country had been labelled a bankrupt, corruption-ridden black country. A huge black state had been created in our country where children had no security, people had no confidence in the future and there was no faith in the law.

The people handed this country over to us to completely cleanse this black state and build a better country for future generations. We give you this assurance: the National People’s Power will uproot this black state from its very foundations.

When this established black state began to shake, those who had received protection, security and privileges from that black state became extremely alarmed. They are now saying that this government must be driven out, the groups that were protected by and enjoyed privileges under the old black state.

Let me give you one assurance. No matter who becomes alarmed, our government of the National Power will not be disturbed by any such agitation. We have the enormous power of the Executive Presidency; we have a two-thirds majority in Parliament; and we have considerable power in the Pradeshiya Sabhas and Municipal Councils.

However, we do not consider executive power or a two-thirds majority in Parliament to be our greatest source of power. We place our trust solely in the people. Previous rulers also had executive power and two-thirds majorities. One brother was President, another brother was Prime Minister, another brother was Finance Minister and another brother was Speaker, with the entire family in power. But eventually, they were forced to flee the country. Therefore, the secret of our strength lies with the people. We have come to educate the people and further strengthen that people’s power.

We began to stop the large-scale corruption within the economy of this black state. There was a black economy in which the dollars earned with great difficulty by Sri Lanka were secretly taken out of the country. By now, we have arrested several bank officials and several people connected to these crimes. The amount of money they had secretly taken out of the country was approximately US$1 billion. One billion dollars is approximately the amount our country earns from its entire tea exports. The Criminal Investigation Department and the Customs Department have intervened and completely stopped the smuggling of dollars out of the country through the black economy.

Previously, money that should have reached the Treasury, including tax revenue and income from land leases, did not reach the Treasury. Before reaching the Treasury, it went through various routes into their homes. Even after reaching the Treasury, another portion went into their homes. As a result, the Treasury was emptied. We stopped every cent that should come to the Treasury from being diverted through other routes, closed all those illicit routes and strengthened the Treasury.

As a result, in 2025 we were able to record the highest government revenue as a percentage of GDP, 16.7% , in 30 years.

Likewise, we are handling the money coming into the Treasury extremely. In the past, public money was wasted by awarding contracts without any feasibility studies, building a port if they felt like it and an airport if they felt like it. We stopped this and, because we spent money carefully, we were able to significantly reduce the budget deficit. In 2025, we recorded the lowest budget deficit recorded in Sri Lanka since 1957. These benefits flow to the people when the black economy is cleansed.

We are releasing the wealth we have accumulated in this way down to the village level and to the people. We have sent a large amount of money for development in the Kalutara District. In next year’s Budget, we will allocate Rs. 2 trillion for capital expenditure. No government in Sri Lanka’s history has allocated such a massive amount for capital development. In addition, to address urgent issues arising at district level, we will directly provide every district with a budget reserve of Rs. 2 billion, which District Secretaries will be able to spend with the approval of the District Coordinating Committee.

When we came to power, the Mahapola scholarship for university students was Rs. 5,000. Today, we have doubled it to Rs. 10,000. The fertiliser subsidy for farmers, which was Rs. 15,000, has now been increased by us to Rs. 30,000. When we came to power, the allowance for persons with disabilities was Rs. 5,000; today it is Rs. 10,000. We have also increased the allowance for senior citizens. Previously, children living in care homes received no allowance whatsoever. Today, we provide Rs. 5,000 every month to the accounts of those children. When those children turn 18 and leave the care home, we provide Rs. 2 million to enable them to build a house.

We provided Rs. 6,000 each to 1.7 million schoolchildren to purchase educational equipment. These are things that have never been done before in Sri Lanka’s history.

During the past period, we faced several major crises. The disaster that caused the greatest economic destruction in Sri Lanka’s history was the ‘Ditwah’ cyclone disaster. This disaster caused greater economic destruction than the tsunami. We allocated to restore infrastructure in the affected areas and rebuild the lives of the people.

We are providing Rs. 5 million each to rebuild houses. If a cattle animal was lost, we provided Rs. 50,000. Those who lost a pig or a goat were given Rs. 30,000 each, while compensation of Rs. 200 was paid for a broiler chicken and Rs. 400 for a laying hen. Previously, Rs. 40,000 was paid per hectare of paddy land. We paid Rs. 150,000. Because our Treasury was strong, we were able to successfully face this disaster.

Next, the war in the Middle East began. People were frightened with claims that there would be no fuel and that electricity would be cut off, and queues began to form. But we did not allow fuel queues to develop, nor did we cut electricity. Because the increases in global oil prices and electricity costs caused by the Middle East war were too burdensome for the people, we allocated Rs. 100 billion for fuel and electricity subsidies. The Government bore Rs. 100 of the cost of each litre of fuel and provided Rs. 60 billion for the subsidy. Likewise, the Government absorbed the increase in electricity bills for the 95% of ordinary consumers who consume less than 180 units of electricity and paid Rs. 15 billion to the Ceylon Electricity Board.

We changed the extremely repulsive black politics that existed in our country. We ended the culture in which people were afraid of politicians and politicians wasted public money. We introduced an Act abolishing the pension that MPs received after five years. We abolished all the privileges granted to former Presidents, including houses, vehicles, security and secretarial staff. Today, there is no need to fear a politician. We have changed the political culture in which it was said that not even a crow could fly over a politician’s head. We have fully ensured the democratic right of the people to criticise the Government and to protest.

During the past two years, for the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, we have been able to make these two years a peaceful period during which not a single tear-gas attack was carried out against a public protest, no batons were used and no water cannon attacks were launched. The police had reported to me that even the tear gas in police stocks has now expired. This is true democracy. We have removed black politics and established a political system that is genuinely accountable to the people.

We have ended the thieves-and-police game that had brought the law to complete collapse. Previously, when one government came to power, the others would call them thieves, and when they went into opposition, they would become the police. Because of this thieves-and-police game, they were not afraid to steal or engage in corruption. But they never thought that another clean group would come along and actually enforce the law. Today, that game has ended and the law is genuinely being enforced. We have a large number of cases dating back 15–20 years. We are strengthening the Criminal Investigation Department to resolve them quickly before they become barred by the statute of limitations. We are also taking steps to provide police officers with facilities and a special allowance from next January.

Previously, the Government Analyst’s Department produced only around 3,000 reports a month. After we provided facilities and allowances, it produced 9,084 reports last month, helping to reduce delays in cases. We established seven new High Courts in Colombo alone. There is no point in punishing someone long after the event; punishment should be delivered while the incident is still within living memory. We will bring the necessary constitutional amendments without fear. We will not reverse any decision taken after due consideration for the people. As soon as the decision relating to the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution is delivered, we will immediately present it to Parliament, pass it and take action to punish the corrupt.

Previously, before the world, our country was seen as a black country. International organisations discussed Sri Lanka as a country moving upwards on the corruption index, moving downwards in terms of peace and with an economy in collapse. In the parliaments of other countries, Sri Lanka was cited as an example of what not to do. The prime minister of one country said that she would not allow what happened to Sri Lanka to happen in her country. Another country said, ‘Look at Sri Lanka, destroyed after borrowing money.’ Today, that situation has changed completely. Sri Lanka is making rapid progress across every economic and social indicator at the international level. Sri Lanka is among the leading countries that have recovered most rapidly from the recent economic crisis. In international matters and foreign policy, we have taken decisions directly and firmly in a manner that safeguards the country’s sovereignty and dignity.

The main tool of black politics at that time was racism. The governments that were in power then funded racist organisations on both sides, created Sinhala-Muslim conflicts and pushed people into situations where they attacked one another. Our country was humiliated before the world. The two years of the National People’s Power have been two years during which not a single police complaint relating to a racist conflict has been recorded. We have completely defeated that racist black politics and established national unity.

The most dangerous aspect of this black state was drugs and the underworld. It had grown to such an extent that even the chairmanships of some Pradeshiya Sabhas were decided by the underworld. Councillors were intimidated and forced to occupy the chairman’s chair. With the vast black wealth they accumulated, they bought off weak officials in the police, Customs, passport offices and the Department of Motor Traffic. That black money was pumped into politicians’ election campaigns. As a result, the underworld was able to control a significant part of the state apparatus.

During the past two years, we have seized kilogrammes of heroin, 308 kilogrammes of cocaine, 1,820 kilogrammes of ‘ice’ and 16 million narcotic pills. When this small country has a population of 22 million, the seizure of 16 million narcotic pills alone demonstrates the disastrous situation the country was in.

We brought back to Sri Lanka 74 leading underworld criminals who had fled the country. We will bring back more in the future. We have also taken over by the State buses, estates, land and buildings worth Rs. 6 billion belonging to drug traffickers. For the sake of the future generation of our country, we will completely eradicate this drug menace and the underworld from this country. The Government of the National People’s Power is the only government that is directly confronting drugs and the underworld associated with them. For this purpose, special units have been established with the support of the police and the three armed forces, and investigations have been expedited through daily raids and discussions.

We cannot build the country while retaining this black state. The first step in building the country is to destroy this black state. The people of our country voted for us to fulfil that responsibility. While fulfilling that responsibility, we are also implementing a large number of major plans for the country’s future development.

Next year, we will begin work on three major expressways. They are the road from Galagedara to Rambukkana, the road from Ingiriya to Padukka, and the road from Kurunegala to Galewela. For the first time in Sri Lanka’s history, all three of these expressways will be constructed entirely using money from our Treasury, without taking a single cent in foreign loans.

We are beginning a project to electrify our railway system. The total cost is estimated at Rs. 60 billion. As the first step, arrangements have been made to award tenders this November for the electrification of the railway lines from Panadura to Maradana, from Negombo to Maradana and from Ragama to Maradana. The full amount of Rs. 100 billion required for this will be provided in next year’s Budget.

We are beginning construction of the massive Malwathu Oya reservoir project at a cost of Rs. 47 billion. We have decided to provide whatever allocation is required for this in next year’s Budget.

We have planned to construct 1,000 4G towers within the next three years to complete 4G signal coverage throughout the country. We will complete work on 250 of these towers next year. We will allocate Rs. 30 billion in next year’s Budget for digitalisation. As a result, citizens will have the opportunity to access around 80% of government services from home using their mobile phones. All transactions, including birth and death certificates, land deeds and revenue licences, will be able to be carried out digitally from home.

Instead of the traditional university system, arrangements are being made to establish 50 new vocational universities throughout the country. Two vocational universities will be established in the Kalutara District alone. This will give our children the opportunity, after completing their Advanced Level examinations, to attend either traditional universities or vocational universities and strengthen their future.

No matter how much electricity we generate through solar power, the highest demand for electricity in our country occurs during the peak period from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Since there is no sunlight at that time, we have to burn diesel. As a solution, we have installed a massive 160-megawatt battery storage system to store electricity generated from solar power during the daytime and release it between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. To further reduce diesel consumption, arrangements are being made to install another 200-megawatt battery system. We are also reviewing the unfavourable agreements that existed at the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and working to create a competitive market that will provide fuel to consumers at the lowest possible price.

We allocated Rs. 25 billion to develop rural roads. However, the Middle East conflict created difficulties in importing the bitumen suitable for our country. Through a special Cabinet paper, we authorised the Petroleum Corporation to import the required bitumen from anywhere in the world, at whatever price necessary, so that the roads could be completed quickly. Likewise, because of the El Niño climate conditions, there is a drought lasting until the end of September, followed by heavy rains from October to January. We have provided the necessary funds to renovate small reservoirs that have dried up so that the maximum amount of water from those rains can be stored. This will enable farmers to cultivate their land without hindrance during future periods of drought.

Our Government of the National People’s Power is not a government that operates aimlessly. Before implementing every project, we conduct a thorough feasibility study and allocate funds only if it will produce results for the people. For this purpose, Rs. 100 million and Rs. 200 million have been allocated in this Budget. We have decisively changed the traditional path we had followed until now. That new change is what the people expected from us.

Some people say that we are going to hold a referendum to postpone the presidential election. These are statements made by frightened people without political understanding to frighten the public. We will not postpone elections under any circumstances. We will hold the presidential election and general election as scheduled. There are currently legal obstacles to holding the provincial council elections. As soon as the electoral system agreed upon by all parties in Parliament is decided, we will also hold the provincial council elections. We will never attempt to deceive the people and retain political power. We will always place our trust solely in the people.

Therefore, let us come together again. I conclude by asking all of you to contribute to this historic journey of building the country by further strengthening the strongest political movement of the National People’s Power at grassroots level.

Thank

you very much! Victory to everyone!

(Geneva, September 1, 2026) – The Sri Lankan government’s prosecution of past grave abuses has lagged, raising concerns for future progress, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. United Nations officials and UN member countries at the Human Rights Council should call on the government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to show greater determination to address emblematic rights cases and cooperate with international accountability efforts.

The 49-page report, “‘Not Genuine with Justice’: Sri Lanka’s Lack of Will to Prosecute Past Abuses,” provides an overview of domestic justice efforts in seven prominent cases of grave abuses in which the Dissanayake government has made a measure of progress since taking office in 2024. Human Rights Watch found that many emblematic cases, including a massacre of aid workers, the targeting of journalists, and enforced disappearances of academics and others, remain stalled, while families of victims and human rights defenders face threats and intimidation.

“The Dissanayake administration needs to break from past government practice of delaying and denying justice for grave abuses,” said Lucy McKernan, UN Human Rights Council director at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Human Rights Council should urge the Sri Lankan government to take credible steps toward accountability for past crimes and end reprisals against victims, their families, and human rights defenders.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 32 victims of abuses, family members of the disappeared, and lawyers and other human rights defenders, and extensively reviewed court documents and other sources.

Tens of thousands of people were tortured, forcibly disappeared, abducted, and killed by government security forces and nonstate armed groups during Sri Lanka’s 1987-1989 Marxist insurgency in the south and the civil war between the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in 2009.

Sri Lanka has a legacy of failed attempts at obtaining justice for past abuses. Successive governments have appointed more than 10 commissions since the 1990s to inquire into human rights violations, but none led to prosecutions or revealed what happened to thousands of people who disappeared. Various administrations either made minimal progress on cases or actively intervened to block the few criminal investigations underway.

“Excavations [of mass graves] alone will not provide justice,” said a family member of a disappearance victim in Jaffna. “Will those who are responsible for abuses be held accountable?” Investigators have recovered the remains of 582 people from a mass grave at Chemmani, near Jaffna, but there has been no apparent progress in identifying the victims or finding what happened to them.

The Dissanayake government has made some progress in important investigations that were previously derailed. These include the inquiry into the 2009 murder of a newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge; the 2010 enforced disappearance of a journalist, Prageeth Ekneligoda; and the enforced disappearance by naval intelligence officers of 11 young men who were held for ransom in 2008 and 2009.

An investigation into an alleged high-level government conspiracy behind the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 269 people, was only able to proceed after President Dissanayake took office. In February 2026, police arrested Suresh Sallay, a former military intelligence officer, for colluding with an Islamist group accused of carrying out the attacks. In June, a Sri Lankan court banned former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and two other military intelligence officers from foreign travel in connection with the ongoing investigations into the attacks.

Despite the limited progress, the Dissanayake government has not responded with the needed urgency to end impunity for grave abuses, Human Rights Watch found. There has been no progress in other important cases in which senior officials have been implicated, including the 2006 killing of five Tamil students and the massacre of 17 mostly Tamil members of the French aid group Action Contre la Faim. Twenty years on, no one has been arrested, let alone prosecuted, for these killings.

The Dissanayake government has not accepted the Sri Lanka Accountability Project, established by the UN Human Rights Council to collect evidence of serious rights abuses. It has failed to establish the promised Directorate of Public Prosecution to independently prosecute past abuses.

Instead, it has backed initiatives of previous governments, such as the Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparations, which many victims’ families have rejected because they consider them efforts intended to delay justice.

Since the end of the civil war in 2009, the UN has played an important role in promoting justice and accountability while seeking to end ongoing violations. The UN Secretary-General’s 2011 Panel of Experts report and the 2015 investigation on Sri Lanka by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented extensive war crimes and other abuses by both sides during the civil war. And the UN Human Rights Council has adopted a series of resolutions seeking accountability.

The UN Human Rights Council and the OHCHR should continue to review the Dissanayake government’s progress on justice and press for action to address decades of impunity, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Dissanayake government should jumpstart its efforts to obtain genuine accountability for the killings and disappearances in the past conflicts,” McKernan said. “The UN high commissioner and UN member states at the Human Rights Council should urge the Dissanayake government to demonstrate its expressed commitment to justice in Sri Lanka.”

For decades, families across the Jaffna peninsula and surrounding islands have relied on wells and rationed pipe schemes for water that was often salty, hard, or unsafe to drink – a daily reality shaped by the region’s thin rainfall and absence of any river or reservoir.

However, this reality changed with the construction of a Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant at Thalaiyadi, as part of the Jaffna-Kilinochchi Water Supply Project (JKWSP), funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It was the first large-scale seawater desalination plant built in Sri Lanka and among the first of its kind that the ADB has financed anywhere as well.

The SWRO desalination plant project treats and purifies seawater into freshwater, providing a reliable source that is independent of the district’s limited and often contaminated groundwater.

The contract was awarded in January 2021 to Suez International, and preliminary work began in March 2021, although feasibility studies and research into alternative water supply mechanisms had been underway for many years prior. The project design and build were completed by September 2024, and by October, operations had already begun.

Under the terms of the contract, Suez International will operate the plant for seven years, transferring full operational control to Sri Lanka’s National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) by October 2031.

The SWRO plant was developed under the Jaffna-Kilinochchi Water Supply Project (JKWSP), backed by $210m in ADB funding and $56m in government funding, out of which $15m ADB funds were used to rehabilitating and strengthening the Iranamadu irrigation reservoir as an earlier, complementary component of the water supply strategy from which 55,000 farmers have benefited as well.

Jaffna Peninsula’s chronic water crisis stems from a fundamental hydrological deficit. To put this into perspective, the region gets only 1,200mm of annual rainfall against 1,800mm of potential evaporation, with no rivers or reservoirs, leaving its 600,000 residents dependent on groundwater that can safely yield only 13,000 to 35,000 cubic metres per day against demand exceeding 50,000 cubic metres of water every day.

A 2007 government feasibility study revealed that the groundwater itself was heavily compromised, with nitrate levels from fertiliser and pesticide use, hardness and iron content in 99% of tested wells, and faecal contamination near densely populated areas, including the hospital, all exceeding national drinking water standards.

However, a large portion of this water crisis has been alleviated through the SWRO plant.

Currently, the SWRO plant, located in Thalaiyady, Jaffna, is designed to produce 24,000 cubic metres of clean water per day, equivalent to 24 million litres. However, producing this amount requires extracting at least 50,000 cubic metres of raw seawater.

Out of it, only 24,000 cubic metres are converted into clean drinking water; the remaining volume, now a concentrated brine, is pumped back into the sea in a procedure in accordance with the Central Environment Authority and the Marine Environment Protection Authority standards.

A total number of 15,000 households benefit from the SWRO plant as of now, including hospitals and universities, which has impacted the lives of many in the region positively with twenty elevated tanks completed across the peninsula.

For instance, R. Kavitha, an Advanced-Level student, used to fetch water from a common public well located far away.

However, since the introduction of the SWRO plant, Kavitha no longer has to walk that distance to fetch water, conserving her time and energy.

As a result, with more time on her hands now, Kavitha is able to spend it more productively and earns a living as a tailor, stitching saree jackets to the customers in the neighbourhood.

Murugan Sugandi, a primary school teacher, had to fetch three categories of water separately in three different locations – water for drinking, pipe water, and saline water from wells for other purposes – before the SWRO project.

Drinking water had to be fetched at odd times, between 2 am and 6 am, from a location half a kilometre away from where she lived, as the water would evaporate and the well would go dry after 6 am. In addition to this hurdle, Sugandi and the others like her had to also face the long line of people at the well near the kovil. Now, this laborious chore has ended.

Although currently only 15,000 households are connected to the SWRO, with new connections being added as consumers apply, this is not its full capacity. The target is about 60,000 households.

At the current pace, it is expected to take roughly two to three years to reach the full target number of connections, and the planned coverage area extends from near Kodikamam to the islands off the peninsula, said JKWSP Chief Engineer V. Vijayakanth.

The U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka says a joint counternarcotics operation has disrupted a Pakistan‑based trafficking network attempting to move crystal methamphetamine through Sri Lanka to international markets.

The Embassy said in a statement that acting on intelligence developed between August 14–29 by the DEA’s Foreign Counterparts Unit and Pakistan’s Anti‑Narcotics Force Special Investigations Cell, Sri Lanka’s Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) intercepted suspicious maritime containers arriving from Pakistan.

The seizure yielded approximately 463 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, concealed in bath towels, with an estimated street value of $21 million. Several suspects, including Pakistani nationals, were taken into custody.

The US Embassy stressed that the operation underscores the strength of the US–Sri Lanka partnership in dismantling transnational criminal organizations that fund terrorism and threaten communities in both countries.

It further noted that this cooperation builds on longstanding training and technical assistance provided through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) to Sri Lanka Police and Customs.

The United States reaffirmed its commitment to working with Sri Lanka and regional partners to aggressively pursue transnational criminal organizations, deny them revenue from illicit drug trafficking, and protect citizens from the dangers of narcotics.