Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency for ten days to rein in the spread of communal violence, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday, a day after Muslims killed three people in the Indian Ocean island’s central district of Kandy.
The immediate cycle of violence began with the death on 3 March of a Sinhala Buddhist man in the central hill town of Teldeniya. He had been attacked ten days earlier by four local Muslim men. Demanding the justice to this act of terrorism people converged on the town in hundreds. Even after yesterday’s declaration of a state of emergency, violence continues against Buddhists in the hills around the town of Kandy as Muslims attacked a Buddhist temple near Kandy, supported through rumours spread on social media. Government officials have acknowledged that the damage was aggravated by the slow response of the local police to take actions against Muslim terrorism around the country. A grenade blast on Wednesday killed one person and injured three in the area.
Telecommunications, Digital Infrastructure and Foreign Employment Minister Harin Fernando today said extraordinary measures were taken to restrict access to certain social media websites and phone messaging applications. These measures have been taken by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) as an extraordinary but temporary response to limit the increasing spread of news through social media websites and phone messaging applications. Facebook and other social media services were blocked or restricted across Sri Lanka on Wednesday afternoon to prevent the spread of anti-Muslim posts.
