Old footage falsely claimed as Sri Lanka president explaining onion purchase rule

Published on November 28, 2025 at 08:12
2 min read
By Harshana SILVA, AFP Sri Lanka

Amid the growing discontent among Sri Lankan farmers surrounding the new purchasing standard for large onions introduced by the government, footage of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has circulated on social media with posts claiming to show him explaining about the rationale behind the new rule. In fact, the video shows Dissanayake talking about an official gazette on coconut sizes in a 2020 news report.

"Do you know why it was gazetted that the diameter of a big onion should be between 35 and 65 mm? Anura Dissanayake explains the reason. Hear it," reads a Sinhala-language Facebook post shared on October 29, 2025.

In a video, Dissanayake says, "Our measurements department changed all the measurements in the 1980s. Length is measured in meters and centimetres. The gazette mentions measurements in inches."

The large harvest of big onions this year -- expected to be more than double that of 2024 -- and concerns over rising food prices triggered by monsoon rain have prompted the government to purchase the crops to help local farmers (archived links here and here).

The Ministry of Agriculture has announced that they would buy big onions at 130 Sri Lankan rupees (0.42 dollars) per kilogramme (archived link).

Lanka Sathosa -- country's state-owned wholesale and retail chain -- began to purchase big onions at the set price on October 3, 2025, gradually raising it to 155 rupees, its CEO DL Malage told AFP.

But local farmers say that prices are inadequate considering the production cost, and claim that the standards are unprecedented and impossible to meet, as they require onions to be between 35 and 65 millimetres in diameter (archived link).

Lanka Sathosa has told reporters that they do not measure the produce.

Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on November 10, 2025 with a red X mark added by AFP

The text superimposed on the clip in the Facebook post, shared more than 2,700 times, reiterates Dissanayake's remark.

Comments from users suggest that they believed the video showed Dissanayake discussing the recently introduced standards for large onions.

"A madman has become president. This guy is laughing at and mocking the people of this country. He's a disgrace and is destroying the entire nation," one user said.

The leftist administration of Dissanayake came to power last year, pledging to restore law and order.

Another user commented, "He is truly an utter fool; the import of onions should have been stopped four months ago to give farmers a fair price for their large onions."

But the video shows Dissanayake in 2020 talking about the size of coconuts.

Old footage on coconut size

The clip with the false claim features the logo of Sri Lankan TV channel News First in the top right corner. Keyword searches found the original video on the channel's Facebook page from September 20, 2020 (archived link).

The video shows Dissanayake, who was an opposition leader at the time, criticising the government for using inches in a gazette on coconuts (archived links here and here).

Screenshot comparison of the video shared in false Facebook posts (L) and original clip published in 2020

In September 2020, the Consumer Affairs Authority set maximum retail price for coconuts based on their circumference in inches through an extraordinary gazette (archived links here and here).

Dissanayake's National People's Power (NPP) party argued that Sri Lanka uses the metric system, not inches, therefore the government announcement could not be enforced (archived link).

AFP has previously debunked misinformation targeting the Sri Lankan President.

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