RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – Sri Lanka’s beleaguered President Gotabaya Rajapaksa may be on his way to Saudi Arabia, according to reports, which, if confirmed, would add him to an uncomfortable list of fallen leaders forced to seek asylum in the kingdom.
Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives, following remarkable scenes that saw protesters entering the presidential and prime ministerial estates, swimming in pools and taking selfies lounging on luxurious furniture.
The president confirmed his resignation after he and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesing were widely blamed with economic mismanagement that has led to skyrocketing costs and shortages of essentials.
Rajapaska flew on a Saudi airlines flight to Singapore on Thursday, according to a report in the Associated Press.
The AP quoted a Maldives official as saying that he was heading to Jeddah, but the official later said he could no longer confirm it.
If his final destination is the Saudi coastal city, Rajapaksa would join an unenviable list of toppled rulers fleeing to the Persian Gulf kingdom, either as a quiet retirement home or a pit stop on the path back to power.
From offering sanctuary to brutal Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin in the 1980s and a string of Pakistani leaders in the 2000s, to welcoming Tunisian and Yemeni rulers following the Arab Spring uprisings, Saudi Arabia has often been a home away from home for the overthrown, the disgraced and the embattled.
In most cases of asylum, leaders are given refuge at the Saudi government’s expense.
Ugandan strongman Amin, whose eight-year-rule in the 1970s was defined by wide scale human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and corruption, lived out the last two decades of his life peacefully in Jeddah.
He lived in a luxury villa overlooking the Red Sea paid for by the Saudi government, who also gave him a generous monthly stipend.
Tunisian dictator Zin el Abidine Ben Ali chose the quiet life too, fleeing for Saudi Arabia in January 2011 following the revolution which began in his country and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings across the whole region.
Like Amin, little was known about Ben Ali’s life in Saudi Arabia - aside from a 2013 Instagram post showing the former dictator, who ruled Tunisia for 23 years, smiling in striped pyjamas.
“As fellow authoritarians, the Saudis empathize with the threat of popular unrest and prioritize regime security over everything else. Those on the receiving end of popular unrest have often found refuge in the kingdom,” Andreas Krieg, assistant professor at the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London, told MEE.