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Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has lifted a nationwide state of emergency imposed earlier this month after Buddhist-Muslim clashes.
"Upon assessing the public safety situation, I instructed to revoke the State of Emergency from midnight yesterday," Mr Sirisena said on Twitter on Sunday.
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.
Two people were killed and hundreds of Muslim-owned properties and more than 20 mosques were damaged, media reported.
Tension has been growing between the two communities over the past year, with some Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalising Buddhist archaeological sites.
Some Buddhist nationalists have also protested against the presence in Sri Lanka of Muslim Rohingya asylum-seekers from mostly Buddhist Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has also been on the rise.
Lifting the state of emergency comes after Sri Lanka's Government on Thursday ended a ban on social media that was imposed because of concerns that it was being used to fan anti-Muslim violence in the country's central region.
Mr Sirisena ordered an immediate lifting of a ban on Facebook after his secretary met with company representatives.
He said they pledged they would not allow the service to be used to incite disharmony.
Soon afterward, Sri Lankans were able to use Facebook.
Viber and Whatsapp have also been unblocked.
Reuters/AP
Topics: religion-and-beliefs, community-and-society, unrest-conflict-and-war, sri-lanka
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