Lagatar24 Desk
Colombo, May 15: Sri Lankan authorities eased a statewide curfew on Sunday in honour of a major Buddhist festival, though festivities were muted as the island grappled with an escalating economic crisis.
After attacks on nonviolent demonstrations by government loyalists, a statewide stay-at-home order has been in effect for much of the week, resulting in nine deaths and over 225 injuries.
Protesters across the Buddhist-majority country have called for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation in recent weeks, citing Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis in its independent history.
Notably, Food, gasoline, and medical shortages, as well as record inflation and protracted outages, have wreaked havoc on the country’s 22 million residents. Vesak, Sri Lanka’s most important religious festival, commemorates Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death on Sunday.
The administration also announced that the curfew would be lifted for the day, but did not specify when or if it would be reinstated.
However, due to the ongoing situation, the administration decided to postpone the event, which had been planned for a temple in the island’s south. The official stated that Buddhists were free to arrange their own celebrations, including the traditional mass meditation and Buddhist discourses.
Soup kitchens, lanterns, and pandal bamboo stages with enormous murals depicting stories from Buddha’s life were typically set up by worshippers.
However, Sri Lanka has struggled to effectively stage Vesak for years, with the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019 dampening celebrations and the coronavirus pandemic affecting the last two years.’
