The government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka on Thursday announced “the lifting of the mandatory requirement to wear face masks outdoors is temporarily suspended, considering the large public gatherings currently taking place in the country.”
The large public gatherings in question are vigorous protests against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s handling of the national economy.
The protests spread nationwide last week as Sri Lanka faced the worst economic crisis in its 75-year history as an independent nation. Food and fuel are scarce, prices are skyrocketing, the power grid is failing, and the government is threatening to default on its debts while it pleads for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.
Protestors take part in a demonstration against the economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 9, 2022. (ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP via Getty Images)
Rajapaksa’s administration blames the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic for killing Sri Lanka’s vital tourism industry, while critics blame the president and his predecessors for mismanaging the economy and implementing a number of highly destructive policies.
A paramount example was the 2021 ban on importing chemical fertilizers, which was supposed to protect Sri Lanka’s dwindling foreign currency reserves by preventing farmers from spending cash to buy chemicals from foreign suppliers. Instead, it caused crop failures and famine, obliging Sri Lankans to spend their money anyway to buy food from abroad instead of just fertilizer.
Rajapaksa apologized for the policy this week.
Protesters demanded Rajapaksa’s resignation as public services collapsed, gasoline became unattainable, and the cost of food rose 30 percent in a single year. Rajapaksa refused to resign, but he did fire just about everyone else in his administration except for the prime minister, who happens to be his brother. Opposition lawmakers walked away from their seats in disgust rather than help Rajapaksa put a new government together.
Rajapaksa tried shutting down protests with a curfew, but that didn’t work, so now he evidently hopes bringing the mask mandate back might do the trick.
Police opened fire on a crowd of protesters blocking a railroad in the town of Rambukkana on Tuesday, killing at least one of them and injuring 13 others. The demonstrations had been largely peaceful until that point, and the increasingly angry public is challenging police claims that they fired because the crowd turned violent. The Sri Lankan Bar Association issued a statement on Wednesday calling for an independent investigation of the shooting.
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