Sri Lanka's President on Sunday lifted a nationwide state of emergency imposed on March 6 for the first time since the civil war following days of communal violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the country. “Upon assessing the public safety situation, I instructed to revoke the state of emergency from midnight yesterday,” Sirisena said on Twitter as he returned to the island after a tour of Japan. He declared a state of emergency to rein in the spread of communal violence after Buddhists and Muslims clashed in the Indian Ocean island's central district of Kandy on March 6, 2018. The government imposed a state of emergency on March 6 and blocked Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media sites following anti-Muslim violence in the island's central hills Kandy and Ampara districts in which three people were killed and hundreds of Muslim-owned properties, including mosques, were damaged. Tension has been growing between the two communities over the past year, with some hardline Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalising Buddhist archaeological sites.
Sri Lanka ends the state of emergency declared on March 6, 2018.