Gotabaya Rajapaksa: Under-fire Sri Lanka president lifts state of emergency

Sri Lanka's under-fire president has withdrawn a controversial state of emergency following a day of political drama and further protests.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa invoked the law - which allows the arrest of suspects without warrants - on 1 April after protests outside his house.

But he lifted them on Tuesday in an apparent concession to angry citizens.

Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence from the UK in 1948.

The heavily import-reliant South Asian nation no longer has enough dollar reserves to buy essential items like food, fuel to power vehicles or even generate electricity.

People have been suffering power cuts of up to 13 hours, massive inflation and a shortage of food and basic goods.

Thousands of people have come out on to the roads over the last few days, demanding the president resign for what they call his mishandling of the crisis.

The strength of the public anger has also translated into political losses for the president.

His entire cabinet quit on Sunday apart from his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The president then called on the opposition to help him form a national unity government but they refused.

"What the people want is for this president and the entire government to step down," opposition leader Sajith Premadasa said on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, as parliament convened, 41 MPs left the president's ruling coalition to "represent themselves independently". The implication of this is still unclear.

Protests across the country were expected to continue on Wednesday.

Public frustration over the crisis saw peaceful demonstrations take place since January.

But the situation has escalated in the last fortnight, with many more people taking to the streets as power cuts stretched to 13 hours and petrol stations ran out of fuel.

"People can't afford their daily rice, their dhal, their basic necessities. People can't get on buses to come to work, to go to school," one protester told the BBC this week.

While most protests are peaceful, there have also been violent flare-ups - with attacks on politicians' homes and clashes between protesters and police.

On Tuesday, the UN Human Rights Council expressed its concerns about the emergency measures in a statement issued before they were lifted.

The UN noted the reports of police violence and said it was worried the restrictions aimed at "preventing or discouraging people from legitimately expressing their grievances through public protests".

It added that: "The drift towards militarisation and the weakening of institutional checks and balances in Sri Lanka have affected the state's ability to effectively tackle the economic crisis."

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