COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Police in Sri Lanka’s largest city lifted a curfew on Friday after protests in which dozens of people were arrested and several police officers were hurt near the home of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa over his handling of an economic crisis.
Hundreds of protesters gathered near Rajapaksa’s residence in a Colombo suburb late on Thursday before police dispersed them with tear gas and water cannons, a Reuters witness said.
“We have arrested 54 people over the unrest last night. Several vehicles belonging to the army and police were burned by the protesters, including two buses, one police jeep and several motorcycles,” a police spokesman, Senior Superintendent Nihal Thalduwa, said.
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Five police officers were hospitalized with injuries, Thalduwa said, adding there were no reports of injuries among the protesters.
Streets in Colombo, the country’s commercial capital, were quiet on Friday morning. Police combed through the wreckage of two burned-out buses near Rajapaksa’s home, a Reuters witness said.
Earlier, a curfew had been imposed in four police divisions of the city, according to Amal Edirimanne, a senior police superintendent.
The island nation of 22 million people is in the midst of its worst economic crisis in years, with rolling blackouts for up to 13 hours a day because the government does not have enough foreign exchange to pay for fuel imports.
The International Monetary Fund will initiate discussions with Sri Lankan authorities on a possible loan program in coming days, a spokesman said on Thursday, as the government looks for a way out of the crisis.
The government is turning off street lights to save electricity, Power Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi told reporters, as a continuing shortage of diesel brought more power cuts and halted trading on the main stock market.
The power cuts add to the pain of Sri Lankans already dealing with shortages of essentials and rocketing prices.
Retail inflation hit 18.7 percent in March over the same period a year ago, the statistics department said on Thursday. Food inflation reached 30.2 percent in March, partly driven by a currency devaluation and last year’s ban on chemical fertilizers that was later reversed.
Inflation was at its worst level in over a decade, said Dimantha Mathew of First Capital Research.
The crisis is a result of badly timed tax cuts and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic coupled with historically weak government finances, leading to foreign exchange reserves dropping by 70 percent in the last two years.
