Colombo: Sri Lanka PM Mahinda Rajapaksa quit on Monday to make way for a unity government in a bid to find a way out of the country’s worst economic crisis in history, but protesters said they also wanted his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to stand down as president. The PM’s resignation came hours after clashes broke out in Colombo and elsewhere, killing five people, including an MP, and wounding almost 200. Ruling party parliamentarian Amarakeerthi Athukorala died after a standoff with anti-government protesters in Nittambuwa near Colombo.
A nationwide curfew was imposed, on top of the state of emergency the President declared last week in the face of escalating protests. Later in the evening, shots were fired from inside Mahinda Rajapaksa’s official residence as thousands of protesters breached the main gate and torched a truck at the entrance. Police sources confirmed that shots were fired in the air to prevent the crowd from breaching the inner security ring of the residence where Rajapaksa was holed up.
Sri Lanka has suffered months of blackouts and dire shortages of food, fuel and medicines in its worst economic crisis since independence. This sparked weeks of overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as well as his brother Mahinda.
On Monday scores of Rajapaksa loyalists attacked unarmed protesters camping outside the president’s office on a seafront promenade in downtown Colombo. Police fired tear gas and water cannon and declared an immediate curfew in Colombo, which was later widened to include the entire island nation of 22 million people. A total of 181 people were hospitalised, a Colombo National Hospital spokesman said. Eight were injured elsewhere.
The army riot squad was called in to reinforce police. Soldiers had mostly been deployed throughout the crisis to protect deliveries of fuel and other essentials, but not to prevent clashes before. “Strongly condemn the violent acts taking place by those inciting & participating, irrespective of political allegiances,” President Rajapaksa tweeted. “Violence won’t sol- ve the current problems. ” Mahinda tendered his resignation, saying it was to pave the way for a unity government —but it was unclear if opposition would cooperate.
After the Colombo violence, anti-government protesters who had been demonstrating peacefully since April 9 began retaliating across the island. MP Athukorala’s car was surrounded by thousands of people in the town of Nittambuwa as he returned home from the capital after the clashes. He shot two people before fleeing to a nearby building and then “took his own life with his revolver”, a police official said. Athukorala’s bodyguard was also found dead. Angry mobs set alight the homes of at least three pro-Rajapaksa politicians. Mobs attacked the controversial Rajapaksa museum in the family’s ancestral village and razed it to the ground, police said.
