President Premadasa is assassinated in LTTE suicide bomb attack during a UNP party rally. The President of Sri Lanka, a country that has been swept by violence for more than a decade, was killed today by a man who detonated explosives strapped to his body during a May Day political rally. At least 10 other people were believed killed in the explosion in Colombo, the capital, including most of the President’s bodyguards and several close aides. Dozens were wounded.
Source
Suicide Bomber Kills President of Sri Lanka, New York Times, 2 May 1993.
Quotations
“The President is no more…It was like a battlefield. We ran in all directions.” Evans Cooray, President’s spokesman.
“This is a culmination of a process of violence which has accumulated during the last four years. The fact that very valuable men were victims of that violence will perhaps be the epitaph of this regime.” Gamini Dissanayake, former Government minister, Democratic Front.
“Born in the slums of central Colombo in 1924 to a Buddhist family, Mr. Premadasa, the son of a washerman, overcame Sri Lanka’s deeply rooted caste and class system, working as a labor union organizer before being elected Deputy Mayor of Colombo in 1955…He joined the United National Party in 1956 and impressed party leaders with his ability to get things done. Four years later he won a seat in Parliament and was named a minister when his party formed the next Government…As Prime Minister, starting in 1978 and after becoming President in 1989, Mr. Premadasa worked to ease poverty in Sri Lanka, a nation of more than 17 million people. He encouraged the building of model villages with clean water, decent roads, schools and health centers. He recently encouraged the placement of small-scale industries, mostly garment-related, in poor areas by giving factory owners low-interest loans and a share in textile quotas for the United States and Europe.” New York Times, 1 May 1993.
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