Sri Lanka will mark its fifth Easter since the harrowing April 21, 2019, jihadist suicide bombings that killed 275 people and injured dozens of others, deliberately targeting crowded churches and popular hotel brunch spots.
The Chinese state-run Sinopec oil company signed a deal on Monday with the government of Sri Lanka that will allow it to conduct operations in the impoverished island nation for the next 20 years.
The socialist government of Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe charged student protesters on Monday with violating the “Prevention of Terrorism Act” by holding a peaceful march, the latest in a string of actions supporters of the nation’s anti-government protest movement say are a “witch hunt” against legitimate complaints against corruption and incompetence.
Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled his country in July after protesters stormed his official residence and threw a four-day house party, is applying for a U.S. green card and looking to settle in America, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror reported on Thursday.
The Sri Lankan Health Ministry on Monday asked residents to resume using face masks, social distancing, and aggressive hand washing to control the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.
The armed forces of Sri Lanka executed a violent raid on the peaceful “Occupy Galle Face” protest camp located in the heart of the national capital Colombo on Friday, the first major order by newly-minted President Ranil Wickremesinghe in the face of months of calls for the entire Sri Lankan government to resign.
Acting President of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe won Wednesday’s presidential vote – to serve out fleeing former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s term – with 134 votes in an “election” by parliamentary elites immediately rejected by the nation’s mass protest movement.
Sri Lanka’s ambassador to China Palitha Kohona told the Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times in an interview published on Monday that anyone blaming Beijing’s predatory loans for Sri Lanka’s economic disaster was spreading “convenient propaganda” and calling China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) a “debt trap” is a “gross exaggeration.”
The Sri Lankan Ministry of Health announced on Sunday that daily coronavirus infections have risen from ten to 25. The ministry advised residents to resume masking, social distancing, and getting vaccination boosters.
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is hoping to take out yet another billion-dollar loan, open a separate $1.5 billion credit line, and activate a $1.5 billion currency swap with communist China, Sri Lanka’s envoy to Beijing told Bloomberg News on Friday.
The political crisis triggered by months of socialist economic collapse in Sri Lanka continued on Wednesday with violent clashes between protesters and soldiers, resulting in upwards of 80 people hospitalized in one day and the military announcing soldiers were “empowered” to attack civilians if deemed necessary.
Now-former President of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country, reportedly taking a military jet to the Maldives, on Wednesday shortly before he had agreed to resign from office.
What appeared to be throngs of hundreds of protesters remained at the home of the president of Sri Lanka as of Tuesday after occupying the residence and sending President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing to an undisclosed location this weekend.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka officially confirmed his intention to resign on Monday following a national wave of vandalism and mob protests that culminated with apparently thousands of people storming his house and bathing in his pool.
Embattled socialist President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka revealed on Wednesday that he had called Russian strongman Vladimir Putin seeking help to purchase oil amid what the nation’s prime minister has called the “complete collapse” of Sri Lanka’s economy.
The seemingly ceaseless economic crisis that has left most of Sri Lanka with no food, fuel, medicine, or basic goods and has severely compromised the nation’s power supply has prompted a growing wave of child malnutrition, the BBC observed in a report on Monday citing mothers in the country desperate to keep their children nourished.
The prime minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, declared in remarks to the nation’s parliament on Wednesday that its economy had “completely collapsed.”
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday said he would ask China for foreign aid again, after Beijing turned down a proposed $1.5 billion currency swap. China was a major contributor to Sri Lanka’s economic implosion, having destroyed some of the island’s key industries and bankrolled its corrupt socialist government with loans that could never be repaid.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Saturday that his country might increase its purchases of discounted oil from Russia, and accept more financial assistance from China, as the island nation spirals deeper into an economic crisis.
Protesters in Los Angeles, California, and Staten Island, New York, joined hundreds at home in Sri Lanka this week to demand that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, resign amid catastrophic shortages of most basic goods.
Hundreds of protesters – reportedly armed with clubs, iron rods, stones, and other rudimentary weapons – attempted to storm President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s house in the Mirihana district of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Thursday night, demanding his government address the chronic shortages of fuel, food, medicine, and electricity the country is experiencing.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first head of state to visit Sri Lanka since the devastating Easter Islamic State attacks, making an unexpected stop Sunday at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Kochchikade to honor those killed.
The Sri Lankan opposition newspaper Colombo Telegraph accused President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday of having direct knowledge of an Islamist plot to kill Christians on Easter, lying about it, and firing the nation’s defense chief to cover for the head of national intelligence, a personal friend.
Police in Sri Lanka conducted a series of raids Friday on suspected jihadists, finding in one mosque in Colombo’s suburb of Slave Island a stockpile of 47 swords alongside counterfeit military uniforms, a suicide bomber jacket, and machetes.
Contents: Sri Lanka bombing said to be worst since 9/11; ISIS claims credit for Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombing; Chaos in the Sri Lanka government; Sri Lankans fear a return to the civil war; Sri Lanka’s Generational Recover Era
Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena announced Tuesday he would fire the heads of all security, police, and defense agencies in the country following the devastating jihadist attack on Easter Sunday that has now killed 359 people, mostly Christians.
Members of Sri Lanka’s prime minister’s cabinet revealed Sunday that Indian authorities warned their intelligence officials in advance of Sunday’s deadly jihadist bombings targeting Christians, but that warning never made it to the prime minister’s office.
Sri Lanka police investigators said Monday the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks that targeted Christians and luxury hotel guests were the work of seven suicide bombers.
More than 200 people were killed and hundreds more hospitalized from injuries after a series of blasts devastated three churches and three luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
