Sri Lanka :In the midst of the country's worst economic crisis, Sri Lanka restarts social media sites after 15 hours.

After declaring a statewide public emergency and imposing a 36-hour curfew ahead of a scheduled anti-government rally over the island nation's greatest economic crisis, the Sri Lankan government removed the ban on social media sites such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram on Sunday.

According to an official, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TokTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger services were restored after 15 hours.

The services were either completely or partially disabled.

According to the Colombo Page daily, the decision was made to prevent crowds from assembling in Colombo to protest the government's inability to provide relief to the public who are suffering from shortages of food, basics, fuel, and medicine as a result of hours-long power outages.

Multiple social media services, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Viber, and YouTube, were restricted in Sri Lanka after midnight on Sunday, according to NetBlocks, a watchdog organisation that monitors cybersecurity and Internet governance.

NetBlocks had previously detected a large drop in connectivity levels on Dialog's internet provider from March 29, which coincided with the start of the protests.

On Sunday, the island nation readied for nationwide protests against the government's terrible management of the ongoing economic crisis, which has left people without power for lengthy periods of time and a scarcity of basic necessities. Citizens would be prevented from protesting if a curfew was imposed.

Late Friday night, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa signed a special gazette proclamation declaring a state of emergency in Sri Lanka, effective April 1.

A 36-hour curfew was also enforced by the government, which went into place from 6 p.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. Monday (April 4).

On Saturday, a Sri Lankan dad claimed that his son, a social media activist, had been kidnapped by the police.

Anurudda Bandara's father claimed that on Friday night, someone from the Modera police station in north Colombo kidnapped his son.

He was wanted by the police to be questioned about his social media activity, according to the authorities. He was released on bond on Sunday.

Sri Lanka is in the midst of its worst economic crisis in its history. The population has been suffering for weeks due to long queues for fuel, cooking gas, staples in short supply, and long hours of power outages.

Rajapaksa has defended his government's actions, claiming that the foreign exchange issue was not his fault and that the economic downturn was mostly caused by a pandemic, with tourism revenue and inbound remittances on the decline.

( Details and picture courtesy from Source, the content is auto-generated from RSS feed.)

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