SrI Lanka is now in a national state of emergency. And it is all because of Muslims. But not in the way that much of the western media might be prone to think. For there, as in Myanmar before it, this community is under fire from increasingly hardline Buddhist groups. But unlike that other country, the authorities have acted swiftly. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe did not pussyfoot around the issue and called out the Sinhalese nationalists who targeted minority Muslims in the historic city of Kandy. Indeed, the authorities are already said to be working on drawing up compensations lists of those families who have very nearly lost everything.
Sir Lanka’s neighbours must be greatly relieved. For fresh in their minds will likely be the recent violence against the Rohingya; not the mention the mass exodus of refugees fleeing across the border to Bangladesh. But be that as it may, the international community can no longer afford to ignore the growing violence of Buddhist nationalists who feel under threat from minority Muslims; even though in Sri Lanka they represent 75 percent of the population as compared to the latter’s 9 percent status.
Tensions between the two sides have been simmering since 2012. And this latest bout of unrest was preceded by much of the same in Ampara last week, about 100km from Kandy, where a mosque as well as Muslim businesses were attacked. A worrying development has been the role of social media in coordinating planned attacks.
Following the end of the civil war with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, a number of groups have begun openly professing hatred for Muslims as well as Christians. Primary among these is the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist organisation formed in 2012 and which enjoyed the patronage of then Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse.
The international community must recognise this new threat before it is too late. Meaning that failure to do so will play into the hands of terror groups such as ISIS; who will likely be only too happy to carry out waves of revenge attacks. With already so much of the world in flames, this is a risk that no one should be willing to take. *
Published in Daily Times, March 10th 2018.