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File photograph: The Sri Lankan military gathered at the foundation laying ceremony of a new Buddhist Vihara in Muthur, Trincomalee last month.
Religious minorities across Sri Lankan continued to come under “unabated” attack, said the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in its 2017 report on International Religious Freedom, released this week.
According to the report, Buddhist nationalist groups encouraged detrimental rhetoric, particularly online, that promoted Sinhala Buddhist supremacy and subsequently vilified religious and ethnic minorities. Civil society groups also expressed concern that these Buddhist nationalist organisations were inciting violence.
“Attacks on religious minorities continued unabated from the previous year,” it added.
The State Department report also noted that the construction of Buddhist shrines by Buddhist groups and the military in the North-East continued, despite the shrines being “built in areas with few, if any, Buddhist residents”.
“According to local politicians in the north, the military sometimes acted outside its official capacity and aided in the construction of Buddhist statues,” it added.
The report also stated that “The National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) documented 97 incidents of attacks on churches, intimidation and violence against pastors and their congregations, and obstruction of worship services. The Sri Lankan Muslim Council (MCSL) reported dozens of violent attacks on mosques and Muslim prayer rooms during the year, especially during Ramadan.”
“According to religious and civil society groups, local government actors often ignored – or were reportedly complicit in – abuses of and illegal restrictions on religious freedom,” the report added. “Victims said government actors and police at the local (village, division, and provincial) level responded minimally or not at all to numerous reported incidents of religiously motivated violence”.
Read the full report here.
Last year, the State Department report said the continued construction of Buddhist statues in non-Buddhist areas in the North-East, despite objections from locals and leaving civil society with the perception of “Buddhist Sinhalese religious and cultural imperialism".
