Sri Lankan police push back protesters

STORY: Hundreds of students carrying black flags marched on Colombo's central Fort area, chanting slogans against the government. Police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and water cannon to push them back.

Sri Lanka's economic crisis has come from the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic battering the tourism-reliant economy, rising oil prices and populist tax cuts by the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Mahinda, who resigned as prime minister last week.

Other factors have included heavily subsidized domestic prices of fuel and a decision to ban the import of chemical fertilizers, which devastated the agriculture sector.