Why Sri Lanka President
Rajapaksa is tweaking the Muslim community, which by and large had been his
loyal political partner?
Since 2012 the Buddhist
fringe organization Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) has continued its attacks with
impunity on individuals, institutions and businesses connected with Muslim cultural
and religious practices and identity like places of worship, religious
education, wearing of burkha, and Halal meat. Churches have also had their
share of such hate campaigns.
In the latest infamous
episode, last week BBS thugs disrupted a press conference organized by the
Jathika Bala Sena (JBS) in Colombo at which the JBS founder General Secretary Watareka
Vijitha Thera had threatened to
expose the BBS leader Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara. The JBS General Secretary had been leading a
campaign against BBS attacks since 2013.
The BBS was
founded by two monks - Kirama Wimalajothi and Galagoda Aththe Gnanasaara after
they broke away from the right wing monks party the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU)
saying it was not militant enough in protecting Buddhism. So true to their
sentiment the BBS has been militant
since its start.
It has been thriving on
the paranoia generated by the belief Sri Lanka is not a
multi-religious country but a Sinhala Buddhist one. Its core theme appears to
be that Sinhala Buddhist identity needs to be protected from the threat of
Islam and Christianity. Islamic extremism which was never a reckonable threat
in Sri Lanka has provided the BBS a convenient whipping horse thanks to Jihadi
terrorism’s global record.
According to an Associated
Press report of January 14, 2014 at BBS rallies monks claim Muslims are out to
recruit children, marry Buddhist women and divide the country. BBS monks make
many accusations about Christian pastors making suicide bomb kits, Muslims
taking children away to train in Pakistan without offering supporting evidence.
It quoted the BBS General Secretary Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara as saying
"This is a Buddhist nation, so why are they trying to call it a
multicultural society?Not everyone can live under the umbrella of a Buddhist
culture."
The BBS has been able to channelise the Sinhala Buddhist
chauvinist passions by providing visible manifestations of Islamic and
Christian identity as targets to vent their anger. These include mosques and
churches, Sunday schools, religious gatherings, religious injunctions like
halal meat slaughtering and certification, and wearing of burkha by women. Some
of BBS concerns like the demand for abolishing birth control measures and
advice to Sinhalas to stop using them to have five to six children to increase
the Sinhala population might appear bizarre. But at least in some
sections of people such demands are finding support.
By doing some deft tight rope
walking between the two communities, Muslims have economically prospered. Some
sections of Sinhalas and Tamils feel the Muslim have taken advantage of the
period of LTTE insurgency when the Tamil business community was under siege. So
there could be a class angle to the support extended to the BBS.
The BBS tactics seem to
be working as its strength is growing in direct proportion to the heat
generated by its message and the number of protests it organises against
Muslims and to a lesser extent on Christians. In a show of strength, more than
1300 Buddhist monks and 15,000 people attended a BBS rally in Colombo on
February 17, 2013.
In the year 2013,
barely a year after it was founded in 2012, BBS carried out approximately
241 attacks against Muslims while Christians fared slightly better with 61
instances of attacks on them according to a report compiled by the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC).
The 50-page SLMC report
titled “Religious violence in Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka” was handed over to the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights
Mrs Navanetham Pillay by none other than the Minister of Justice Rauf Hakeem,
leader of the SLMC!
MrsNavanetham Pillay,
presumably drew upon the SLMC report when she spoke at the last UNHRC
session. In her oral report on Sri Lanka she spoke of the surge in incitement
of hatred and violence against religious minorities, including attacks on
churches and mosques, and lack of swift action against the perpetrators.
Apparently the success
of BBS has unnerved the JHU which had considered itself as the sole protectors
of Buddhism. It has added its penny’s worth to inciting anti-Muslim sentiments
with its share of hate speeches. And other copy cat organizations of the BBS
like the Ravana Balaya have come up to add to the mischief.
Many religious leaders including Buddhist prelates, civil
society organisations and leaders of political and social spectrum have
condemned the activities of BBS as a threat to national unity. But at the
same time, BBS’s theme and some of the demands have found support from some of
the Island’s prestigious Buddhist religious heads like the Assigiriya Maha
Nayake. Some educational institutions have banned the wearing of burkha by
Muslim students.
It is difficult to
imagine such acts of lawlessness taking place against a politically important
minority community without the knowledge of the hands-on President Rajapaksa.
Beyond appealing to the people for national unity, the President seems to have
done little to ease the growing feeling of insecurity of Muslims and
Christians.
One would have expected
the President to take serious notice of BBS’ anti-Muslim activities
particularly after the SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem had presented his report to the
UNHRC. But
Rajapaksa’s immediate response was to severely reprimand Rauf Hakeem for
submitting such report to the UNHRC. Other partners of the UPFA coalition
accused the Muslim minister for “washing dirty linen in the public.”
The official line
trotted out to explain government inaction is ludicrous. In early 2014, Media
Minister Keheliya Rambukwella called the anti-Muslim acts "minor
agitations that are normal in any multicultural society." According a
report he said it was intended to encourage community members to work out their
own problems adding "If things get more serious, we will take
action...These kinds of things can ruin a nation, we are aware of that."
The BBS is also
involved in a slanging match with the All Ceylon Makkal Congress
(ACMC) led by Minister for Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen after the
BBS accused of Muslims of illegally settling in Wilpattu forests. The
activities of BBS seem to have unnerved Bathiudeen who had been a long term
loyalist of President Rajapaksa. The ACMC rejoinder said the apparent impunity
with which BBS was acting raised questions whether it was running ‘a parallel
government’ like the LTTE during its existence. The ACMC called for a
‘Commission of Inquiry’ to look into post-war incidents against minorities in
general and Muslims in particular.
The Minister for National Languages and Social Integration,
Vasudeva Nanayakara, who had been critical of BBS, in a recent interview to Ceylon
Today said it should be proscribed by law, as it was disrupting religious
harmony in the country. He said the dormant attitude adopted by the police,
especially with regard to the BBS and its actions, was due to the political
immunity that the organization enjoyed through the intervention of a
high-ranking government official.
Significantly he said, "I can clearly say that the BBS
is enjoying support from a high-ranking State official. That is why its members
are behaving in such a manner. Even the police are lenient towards them owing
to this. There is someone impeding the police from carrying out investigations
against the BBS."
The Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had shown some
interest in the BBS. He was the Chief Guest at the opening of Meth Sevana, the Buddhist Leadership Academy started by
the BBS on March 9, 2013.
According to a media report the Defence Secretary in his
speech on the occasion had said that he decided to attend the event “after
realising its timely importance…. these Buddhist clergy who are engaged in a
nationally important task should not be feared or doubted by anyone.” According
to the BBS, it was Gotabaya who ensured products displaying Halal certification
were withdrawn from the market.
Whether he would support the BBS’ unsavoury activities,
unless it is a part of a political agenda is the moot question.
The Muslim community in
Sri Lanka is barely two million strong, forming just 10 percent of the island’s
population. Most of them speak Tamil, and like Sri Lanka Tamils, have links
with their brethren across the Palk Strait in Tamil Nadu. Muslims, like other
Tamil speaking minority, are divided vertically and horizontally along
sectarian, and class and occupational affinities.
Despite these
limitations they have been great survivors – both politically and socially –
during the difficult years when they had to survive the LTTE-led Tamil insurgency.
In fact, they had developed the fine art of survival not only in the war
between the government and the Tamil Tigers but between the two major parties –
the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).
It is evident Muslim
political partners of President Rajapaksa are feeling frustrated sy the failure
of the government to rein in BBS and curb its anti Muslim agenda. If unchecked,
the President runs the risk of alienating the Muslim community. Together with
the Tamils who already feel let down by Rajapaksa, the two communities make
about 20 percent of the national vote share which is vital for success in the
Presidential poll.
Can the President
afford to alienate these votes with the hope of increasing his support among
Southern Sinhalas?
Of course, continued
government inaction in checking the BBS’ free run would also belie the
government’s sincerity in attending to minority concerns. And it is not going
to help Sri Lanka’s case at the UNHRC when it seriously takes up implementing
the resolution.
So what is the larger
political agenda at work in allowing space for Sinhala chauvinist activities of
the BBS kind? People of Sri Lanka would start demanding answer for this
question from the President when the time comes.
(Col R Hariharan, a retired
Military Intelligence officer, served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in
Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence. He is associated with the Chennai Centre for
China Studies and the South Asia Analysis Group. E-Mail: colhari@yahoo.com
Blog: www.colhariharan.org)
Courtesy: South Asia Analysis Group Sri Lanka Update No 243 Note No 715, April 22, 2014-04-22
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1502
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