Newspaper refutes fabricated headline targeting Sri Lanka president
- Published on December 30, 2025 at 03:10
- 3 min read
- By Harshana SILVA, AFP Sri Lanka
An altered headline from a now-defunct Sri Lankan newspaper has resurfaced in December 2025 social media posts targeting Sri Lanka's leftist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, falsely claiming he sought to abolish laws favouring the country's majority Sinhalese ethnic group. The editor of the Ada newspaper told AFP the original article made no such claim and was instead about Dissanayake's call to do away with ethnic-based laws to strengthen national unity following the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which was blamed on a local jihadi group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic state.
"So, what special privileges do we Sinhalese have?" reads part of a Sinhala-language Facebook post from December 10, 2025.
Shared alongside the post is a screenshot of a newspaper clipping featuring a photo of Dissanayake, with a headline that reads: "Laws that grant privilege only to the Sinhalese people should be abolished."
"Tell this traitorous dog to show what laws affect only the Sinhalese. They say these things to rake in millions of dollars from Western countries and the LTTE diaspora," says overlaid text on the image.
LTTE refers to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group based in Sri Lanka popularly known as the Tamil Tigers that were crushed in May 2009 in a huge military assault, ending a 37-year civil war (archived link).
After gaining its independence in 1948, Sri Lanka enacted laws widely seen as favouring the Sinhalese community such as the Official Language Act of 1956 or the Sinhala Only Act (archived here and here). While later reforms sought to address some of those imbalances, critics say core issues remain, with the successive governments continuing to use existing legislation to marginalise minorities and curb dissent (archived here and here).
Dissanayake, who won the presidential election in 2024, said that all citizens in the South Asian island should be treated equally under the law, describing his party -- the National People's Party -- as the "unity party of the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims," as reported by local media organisation Daily FT in October 2024 (archived here and here).
Comments under the post suggest that users believe that headline is authentic.
"Laws that grant privileges only to Muslims should also be abolished," one user wrote.
"Sinhalese, you got fooled by voting for this president. Do not ever do it again," added another.
Similar claims were made elsewhere on Facebook.
The headline, however, is fabricated.
2019 news report
A Google reverse image search led to a Facebook post which shared a screenshot of the newspaper clipping on June 5, 2019 but the headline reads: "Laws that operate based on individual ethnic groups should be abolished" (archived link).
Based on the layout design and a keyword search of the reporter's byline in the Sinhala-language "H.I.Thushara" AFP found the article was published by local daily Ada Newspaper on June 5, 2019 (archived here and here).
Ada Newspaper ceased its print edition on August 29, 2025 (archived link).
The paper’s editor, Kanchana Dassanayake, told AFP that the headline circulating online is "fake" and said Ada never published such a headline on December 12.
He shared a PDF copy of the original article published in 2019 which carried a report quoting Dissanayake with the headline "Laws that operate based on individual ethnic groups should be abolished".
The article reports that Dissanayake called for abolishing laws applied separately to ethnic groups and drafting a common law to build a united Sri Lankan nation, stressing that public security depends on national unity.
Dissanayake said racists could not foster national unity, stressing that public security could only be guaranteed through unity and that "no extremism" could destroy any community, adding that Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims would continue to live together in the country in the future.
The director general of the President’s Media Division, Prasanna Perera, told AFP that the circulating newspaper clipping carries an "entirely false headline."
He said that Dissanayake’s statement in the article was made after the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019, which killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners (archived link).
The 2019 bombings were blamed on a local jihadi group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
"The original statement was a proposal made in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks, aimed at fostering national reconciliation and unity by calling for the elimination of ethnically-specific legal frameworks to create a harmonious nation," he said.
Local fact-checking outlets Fact Crescendo and Hashtag Generation have also debunked the claim in 2020 and 2024 (archived here and here).
AFP has previously debunked misinformation targeting the Sri Lankan president.
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
