crowd chants soon after president gotabaya fled and resigned, soon after president gotabaya fled andn prime minister, ranil wickremesinghe, was sworn in as the new president. a few weeks later, the former president returned to the country. he now lives in a government bungalow, and many members of his cabinet are back at the parliament. in the recent months, the scale of anti—government protests has come down. but the public discontent is still palpable. what this government has done is that the protests have been met by repression, so that repression has also silenced certain communities. there is fear in terms of what it may entail by protesting. there are continuous arrests, there's surveillance, there are people who are called in for questioning. so the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom to protest is under immense threat in sri lanka. we've been litigating in the public interest for the last 25 years. just in the last year, the new faces that come to court to challenge has been quite remarkable. some of the protesters have been arrested under a controversial law

there were certain allegations raised against the previous government, headed and led by gotabaya rajapaksacorruption. has there been any set of investigations that the government, this new government, has started on those allegations? i think they should do investigations. that power is vested with the attorney general, with the bribery commission, with the police. they must be given an independent task to go ahead and do it. it's a matter based on the evidence before them, for them to do it. merely because of somebody shouting, "go and investigate. put the man inside. "put the man outside," we cannot do that in a democracy. i mean, people can say anything, but if there is evidence, sound evidence, it is the responsibility of those people who are litigating or coming out with those allegations to provide those information which will be sufficient to start an investigation. to help repair the economy, sri lanka secured a crucial $3 billion loan from the international monetary fund. in exchange, the government promised to renegotiate loan terms with its creditors and reduce expenses. the gov