JUST days before protesters stormed government buildings in Colombo, the Anglican Church in Sri Lanka called for the President and Prime Minister to resign, as turmoil in the country came to a head.
The President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country on Saturday, first to the Maldives and then to Singapore, where he announced his resignation on Thursday.
A week earlier, in a strongly worded letter, the Presiding Bishop and Bishop of Kurunegala, the Rt Revd Keerthisiri Fernando, and the Bishop of Colombo, the Rt Revd Dushantha Rodrigo, had called on the President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, to resign immediately.
They wrote: “We are extremely concerned that our people are dying on the streets, languishing in fuel queues for days waiting to get a meagre supply of petrol or diesel.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the Metropolitan, and, on Saturday, Archbishop Welby released a letter to the two Bishops. “This is a human tragedy on an enormous scale,” he wrote.
On Saturday, protesters forced their way into the President’s official residence, prompting Mr Rajapaksa to flee the country. Mr Wickremesinghe was subsequently confirmed as Acting President by the speaker of the parliament on Wednesday, and announced a state of emergency.
Just minutes later, a crowd of protesters — reportedly including Roman Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks — broke through the security outside the Prime Minister’s office, and flooded into the compound.
Mr Wickremesinghe was not in his office at the time, and shortly afterwards he made a TV address describing the protesters as “fascists”, and ordering the military to “do whatever is necessary to restore order”.
In their statement last week, the Bishops called on the armed forces to “act with discernment and restraint in the next few days as the people are agitating for their lives and livelihood to be restored”.
The Church of Ceylon has previously called on the government to “listen to the cries of the people” and take action to avert the humanitarian crisis being caused by the worst economic downturn in the nation’s history (News, 14 April).
In his letter to Bishops Fernando and Rodrigo, Archbishop Welby wrote: “I have watched the terrible crisis in Sri Lanka with horror, and heard of the suffering of the people with intense grief. . . As this crisis worsens, I call on the Anglican Communion to pray fervently for peace and for all the people of Sri Lanka.”
On Sunday, Pope Francis also spoke about the situation in Sri Lanka. “I unite myself to the sorrow of the Sri Lankan people, who continue to suffer the effects of political and economic instability,” he said.