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Sri Lanka Deploys Troops as Fuel Shortage Sparks Protests

Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948, with rolling electricity blackouts and essential goods in short supply Ishara S. KODIKARA AFP
Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948, with rolling electricity blackouts and essential goods in short supply Ishara S. KODIKARA AFP
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Sri Lanka Deploys Troops as Fuel Shortage Sparks Protests

Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948, with rolling electricity blackouts and essential goods in short supply Ishara S. KODIKARA AFP
Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948, with rolling electricity blackouts and essential goods in short supply Ishara S. KODIKARA AFP

Sri Lanka ordered troops to petrol stations Tuesday as sporadic protests erupted among the thousands of motorists queueing up daily for scarce fuel.

The South Asian island nation is grappling with its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948, with rolling electricity blackouts and essential goods such as food and cooking gas also in short supply, AFP said.

Authorities said soldiers were deployed after angry crowds blocked a busy street in Colombo and held up traffic for hours because they were unable to buy kerosene oil on Monday.

"Tempers are getting frayed as queues get longer," a top defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"A decision was made last night to call out soldiers to reinforce the police. This is to discourage any unrest."

Footage of Monday's incident shared on social media showed a group of angry women blockading a coach carrying tourists to protest shortages of kerosene needed for cooking stoves.

The troop call also follows the stabbing murder of a motorcyclist by another driver after a dispute over his place in a long queue for fuel outside the capital.

Three elderly people have dropped dead at fuel queues since Saturday, police said, adding that numerous petrol stations saw people camping overnight to wait for diesel and gasoline purchases.

Military officials said soldiers were deployed at pumping stations of the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corp, which accounts for two-thirds of the fuel retail business in the nation of 22 million people.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office announced a summit of all political parties on Wednesday to discuss the economic crisis, but opposition groups said they planned to boycott the meeting.

Sri Lanka's financial crisis stems from a critical shortfall of foreign currency, leaving traders unable to finance imports.

The Covid-19 pandemic throttled the island's tourism sector -- a key foreign exchange earner -- and remittances from Sri Lankans working overseas have also declined sharply.

Rajapaksa announced last week that the country will seek an IMF bailout.

Shortages have wrought havoc on almost every aspect of daily life, with authorities last week postponing term tests for millions of students because of a lack of paper and ink.

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US Republicans Grill University Leaders in Latest House Antisemitism Hearing

The US Capitol building is lit at dusk (Reuters)
The US Capitol building is lit at dusk (Reuters)
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US Republicans Grill University Leaders in Latest House Antisemitism Hearing

The US Capitol building is lit at dusk (Reuters)
The US Capitol building is lit at dusk (Reuters)

The leaders of three US universities testified before a House of Representatives panel on Tuesday about what they have done to combat antisemitism on campus, saying they were committed to stamping out hatred while protecting academic freedom.

At Tuesday's three-hour hearing, Georgetown University interim President Robert Groves, City University of New York Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, and University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons came under sharp fire from Republicans.

Many of them echoed President Donald Trump's recent attacks on universities, which he has described as "infested with radicalism," and questioned whether the presidents were doing enough to protect Jewish students and faculty.

"The genesis of this antisemitism, this hatred that we're seeing across our country, is coming from our universities," said Representative Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican.

It was the latest in a series of hearings about antisemitism on campus in which university leaders testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is tasked with higher education oversight.

Democrats on the panel used the session to question the Trump administration's gutting of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which probes incidents of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. That has led to a backlog in investigations at a time when Republicans say universities are not doing enough to combat antisemitism.

The US Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the administration to resume dismantling the entire department, part of Trump's bid to shrink the federal role in education and give more control to the states.

Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat, called the hearing a "kangaroo court."

"This scorched earth warfare against higher education will endanger academic freedom, innovative research and international cooperation for generations to come," Takano said, referring to the administration's efforts to cut off funding to some schools, including Harvard and Columbia, and impose other sanctions.

University leaders have come under fire from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian communities for their handling of protests that broke out after the 2023 attack on Israel by the Hamas group and conflict that emerged from it. On some campuses, clashes erupted between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrators, spawning antisemitic and Islamophobic rhetoric and assaults in some cases.

During the hearing, the university leaders were repeatedly asked about their responses to antisemitic actions by faculty or affiliated scholars.

Representative Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, asked Berkeley's Lyons about a February event in which speakers "repeatedly denied that Israeli women were gang-raped by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, and argued that Israel was weaponizing feminism."

Lyons said the online event in question was organized by a faculty member but the comments that Miller cited did not come from the Berkeley faculty member. He said the school anticipated that some of the ideas discussed at the event would prove controversial.

"I did not prevent it from happening because I felt that keeping the marketplace for ideas open was really important in this instance," he said.

Previous hearings held by the panel have led to significant consequences for university presidents.

In December 2023, Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, raised her own political profile by grilling the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She asked them whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate their schools' codes of conduct related to bullying and harassment. Each president declined to give a simple "yes" or "no" answer, noting that a wide range of hateful speech is protected under the US Constitution's First Amendment and under university policies.

Their testimony, which many viewed as insensitive and detached, triggered an outcry. More than 70 US lawmakers later signed a letter demanding that the governing boards of the three universities remove the presidents. Soon afterwards, Harvard's Claudine Gay and Penn's Liz Magill resigned.

Columbia President Minouche Shafik resigned in August, following her April testimony before the committee.