Tamil group protests outside Salman Khan's home over backing Rajapaksa

Tamil groups protested outside Bollywood star Salman Khan’s residence in suburban Mumbai today denouncing the actor’s decision to campaign for Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Television visuals showed a small group of protesters gathered outside the building where the actor lives and shouting slogans against the Bollywood star. The protesters, who were carrying pro-LTTE flags, were detained by the police. It’s not known whether the actor was present at his residence at the time of the protest. Khan had recently visited Sri Lanka and endorsed the Sri Lankan president ahead of a hotly contested presidential poll in the island nation, a move one of Firstpost’s guest columnists had dubbed ‘short sighted’ . [caption id=“attachment_2029061” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Khan with the Sri Lankan president during his recent visit there. AFP image[/caption] The President’s son Namal Rajapaksa had reportedly invited Khan and Sri Lankan-born actor Jacqueline Fernandez, to participate in a health camp organised by the Sri Lankan ruling party’s youth wing. At the time, Khan had also praised the Sri Lankan president. “The President is an amazing man and he is one of the most humble people that I have met. Four years ago when I came here, it took me one and half hours to go to the hotel that I was staying. But today, it took me only twenty minutes to reach here. It appears a lot peaceful today unlike those days where there was a lot of turmoil. There is a drastic change. I think the president is a man of compassion, a man of will”, he was quoted as saying in a Sri Lankan newspaper  the Daily Mirror . Although Rajapaksa ended the 25-year-old war with the LTTE and has overseen the construction of a number of expressways that have drastically cut distances between key cities and towns in the country, cripplingly high cost of living, an authoritarian style of governance and unabashed corruption has led to mass disgruntlement against him. As Khan’s pictures with Rajapaksa and his son went viral on social and Sri Lankan media, his visit drew a a lot of flak for the actor on social media. Many Sri Lankans exhorted Salman Khan to “go back to India” because he did not know what he was talking about. Khan was also called a ’traitor’ by Vaiko, who is one of the most vitriolic critics of the current Sri Lankan administration. “Whoever works hand in gloves with murderers of Tamils,we condemn it,” Vaiko had said. However Salman Khan has defended his actions saying that he had only gone to Sri Lanka to raise funds for a charitable event.