Watch | Stripped of good governance, Sri Lankans launch an 'underwear protest'

Thousands of stores, schools, and companies in Sri Lanka were closed on Friday as public and private sector workers protested the president and government's handling of the island's worst financial crisis in decades.

Sri Lanka has been left with as low as $50 million in usable foreign reserves as a result of the epidemic, rising oil prices, and tax cuts by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's government.

This is the country's largest hartal campaign and strike, organised island-wide 69 years after the major hartal that began in 1953.

During the hartal, Sri Lankan protestors opposite the Parliament complex have thrown underpants on the barricades set up by Sri Lanka Police to prevent them from moving forward, giving the protests an unusual twist.

The yellow barricades, as well as the GI pipe roadblocks erected by Sri Lankan officials, were covered in undergarments.

Student protestors were tear-gassed and forced away by police, but they stayed on and set up a township they called 'Horu-Go-Gama' within hours.

Sri Lankans led by the Inter-University Students Federation, also known as Anthare, established a protest camp along the road leading to the parliament, dubbed 'HoruGoGama.'

This is the latest protest camp established against President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and their government.

Protesters are demanding that the President, Prime Minister, and their cabinet resign immediately, as well as that the Rajapaksa family refund the money that they have stolen from the people over the years.

They accuse the government of mismanaging the economy, which has resulted in increasing food costs and a drop in the country's reserves to historic lows.