Protest in Sri Lanka at president Rajapaksa's home turns violent
Agitated protesters stormed through barricades and were accused of setting fire to a bus on Thursday night.
President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa blamed the events on "extremist elements".
Sri Lanka is in the midst of a foreign exchange crisis that has crippled its economy.
Faced with 13-hour power cuts, a lack of fuel, essential food items and medicines, public anger has reached a new high.
The protest outside the President's house began peacefully, but participants say things turned violent after police fired tear gas, water cannons and also beat people present.
Protesters retaliated against the police by pelting them with stones.
On Friday morning, police arrested 45 people, although no charges have been made against them yet.
The demonstrations mark a massive turnaround in popularity for Mr Rajapaksa, who swept into power with a majority win in 2019, promising stability and a "strong hand" to rule the country.
Critics have been pointing to rank corruption and nepotism - his brothers and nephews occupy several strong ministerial portfolios - as one of the main reasons the country has found itself in. News reports that the president and his ministers are exempt from the power cuts, along with abundant Displays of wealth by family members, have only increased anger.
The government has been blaming the crisis on the pandemic's impact on tourism - one of the island nation's primary sources of foreign revenue - along with a series of attacks on churches on Easter Sunday 2019, which led to a marked drop in tourists.
But experts say that this crisis has been a long time in the making.
"This is an implosion, an accumulated outcome of what has been building up for a couple of decades, and as usual, there is no one to take responsibility for it. Of course, the present government is directly responsible for its wilful mismanagement of the crisis since they came into power in 2019 by sheer incompetency, arrogance and of course corruption," Jayadeva Uyangoda, a political scientist and commentator.
Sri Lanka's former deputy central bank governor WA Wijewardena told the BBC that Sri Lanka made a fundamental mistake in not integrating with the global economy after the end of a civil war in 2009 which saw its economy grow at rates of almost 9%.
"Exports which accounted for 33% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2000 have now fallen to 12% and remain at that level," he said.
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