Fifty-one people are arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy while trying to emigrate to Australia by sea. Police said that undocumented immigration has increased because of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis.
The Sri Lankan economic crisis is an ongoing crisis in the island-state of Sri Lanka that started in 2019. It is the country’s worst economic crisis since its independence in 1948. It has led to unprecedented levels of inflation, near-depletion of foreign exchange reserves, shortages of medical supplies and an increase in prices of basic commodities. The crisis is said to have begun due to multiple compounding factors like tax cuts, money creation, a nationwide policy to shift to organic or biological farming, the Easter bombings in 2019, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The subsequent economic hardships resulted in the 2022 Sri Lankan protests. On Sunday, the Sri Lankan Navy arrested 51 people who were planning to illegally migrate from the island nation to Australia through the sea route. According to an official statement, a fourth such incident in the last one week owing to the ongoing economic crisis in the nation. According to the Sri Lankan Navy, all those attempting to illegally migrate were arrested after a fishing trawler carrying them was seized in the eastern seas. The police said such attempts to flee the country are due to the ongoing economic crisis and it has increased since the early part of this year.