Buddhist monks incite hatred of Muslims in Sri Lanka too

[muriel_volestrangler]

Four years after the killing of between eight and ten thousand Tamils by the Sri Lankan army, which brought to an end a civil war that had lasted for 26 years, there is trouble on the island again. This time the army isn’t directly responsible: instead it’s the Buddhist monks from Bodu Bala Sena, the most active of the fundamentalist groups that have sprouted in Sinhalese strongholds. Three-quarters of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese; most of them are Buddhists. The monks’ target this time is the small Muslim minority. Muslim abattoirs have been raided, halal butchers attacked, homes targeted. The police merely stand and watch, and Sri Lankan TV crews calmly film the violence. A few weeks ago, Buddhist monks got some hoodlums to attack a Muslim-owned car showroom. One of its employees was going out with a young Sinhalese woman and her father complained to a local monk. The Sunday Leader reported that ‘an eyewitness saw a monk leaving one of the temples … followed by a group of youths, mostly under 25 years of age. The group carried stones and, people were later to discover, kerosene.’

A BBS blogger recently explained the ‘reasoning’ behind the targeting of Muslims:

Muslims have been living in this country since seventh century and now only they want to have Halal food in Sri Lanka. Population wise they are only 5 per cent. If we allow Halal, next time they will try to introduce circumcision on us. We have to nip these in the bud before it becomes a custom. We should never allow the Muslims and Christians to control anything in Sri Lanka … Hijab, burqa, niqab and purdah should be banned in Sri Lanka. The law and the legislature should always be under the control of the Sinhala-Buddhists and our Nationalist Patriotic president. After all, Sri Lanka is a gift from Buddha to the Sinhalese.

Difficult to imagine how circumcision could be ‘nipped in the bud’ even by a Buddhist, or how the percentage of the Muslim population could have fallen from 9.7 per cent in the 2011 census to 5 per cent today. It has undoubtedly dropped, however, as a direct result of decades of unchecked harassment and persecution, by Tamils as well as Sinhalese Buddhists.

It isn’t just members of the BBS who spout this nonsense. Many in the Sinhalese political-military mainstream share these views. In the town of Pottuvil, where the Muslims are the majority, soldiers have been helping local monks erect Buddhist statues and allowing loudspeakers to blare out Buddhist hymns morning and night. Local women who own land are being driven off it: the monasteries then steal the land, with the army providing protection.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n08/tariq-ali/short-cuts

[LuvNewcastle]

1. "Nip circumcision in the bud."

I think that's a worthy goal, although I don't approve of violence as a means to accomplish it.

[rug]

2. I can't think of a single Buddhist teaching that this would fit under.

“Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.”

[skepticscott]

6. So these are

No True Buddhists, eh?

[rug]

12. I doubt Buddha would say anyone is a Buddhist.

But they are true nationalists.

[Phillip McCleod]

3. onward buddhist soldiers!

regional religious traditions provide a ready-made ideology for nationalists to attach themselves to. we see it here in the u.s. as well.. the fundies think they are defending the 'traditional' christian america before it disappears forever.

fact is, some traditions deserve to die, and no tradition should trump universal human rights.

[BlueToTheBone]

4. fundamentalists who refuse to accept change seems to be the root

of all conflicts around the world. It's amazing to what lengths people will go to protect themselves from change. Such fear that it kills any agent of change.

[YankeyMCC]

5. as a practicing budhist

Although of a very different school. The continued violence there troubles me greatly. Largely because I can never point and say "not a Buddhist !"

I might debate their understanding of the dharma but only if that was part of solving the problems and bring peace.

Only in accepting that to Buddhists and the Muslims are us is there any hope. Pointing at them as outside, as wrong and therefore not part of our shared responsibility of creating a peaceful world only continues the suffering of rt thinking of each other as separate.

[grantcart]

7. He actually quotes a blogger.

The author, a Trotskyite, is a contributor to Counterpunch, hardly an objective source.


I follow these types of stories whenever I can and I have not heard of any significant Muslim suppression in Sri Lanka.


Indeed the excerpt deals mostly with historical events decades old.


It mentions an assassination by a Buddhist Monk, and yet no where is there any identification of the temple where he resided. Anyone who wants to can wear a robe, it doesn't make him a monk. More to the point no one in any Buddhist sect supported the action by a person who seems to have been unstable, converting to Christianity before his execution.

It is accurate that the Sri Lanka army ended the civil war in a brutal fashion.


It is also true that the Tamil Tigers terrorized Sri Lanka for decades. The use of civilians as a primary terrorist target by the Tigers who invented the suicide bomb jacket. They not only assassinated numerous political leaders (including Rajiv Ghandi) and tens of thousands of Sri Lankans they also conducted ethnic cleansing against Muslims and is alleged to have killed (according to Tamil sources) 8000 Tamils who they considered 'traitors' because they didn't support them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Tigers


Here is a list of Tamil Tiger terrorist actions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_attributed_to_the_LTTE


Now my point is simply that having read a lot of articles about Sri Lanka I have found that those who are critical of Sri Lankans fail to make reference to the tremendous burden that they have been under (about 1000 attacks worse than the Boston bombing).

The most important thing about the list is that it is over.

It appears that this recent story is based on a single blogger.

It doesn't mean that it didn't happen it simply means that if it did happen it is not representative of Sri Lanka.

But trying to have an objective understanding of what is happening has never been a hall mark of counter punch.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. It worries the US ambassador and the UN Human Rights Council too

The U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka expressed alarm at rising hate speech and attacks against Muslims in the island nation and warned that such sentiments should not be allowed to fester.

Hate speeches, vilification and even attacks on Muslim-owned businesses and places of worship by Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist groups have occurred in recent months, and inaction by the government and police has spurred allegations that the government supports the campaign, which it denies.
...
A U.S.-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka at the U.N. Human Rights Council last month also expressed concern over religious discrimination.

Groups led by Buddhist monks have spread allegations that Muslims are dominating businesses and trying to take over the country demographically by increasing their birthrate and secretly sterilizing Sinhalese-Buddhists. Muslims make up 9 percent of Sri Lanka's population, while Sinhalese-Buddhists make up almost 75 percent of the country's 20 million people.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/envoy-alarmed-anti-muslim-events-sri-lanka-18911210#.UXcDw8Vh6Bo

Sri Lanka crowd attacks Muslim warehouse in Colombo

Several people have been injured in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, when Buddhist monks led hundreds in an assault on a Muslim-owned clothing warehouse.

Buddhist monks were filmed throwing stones at the storage centre of popular garment chain Fashion Bug in a suburb of the capital on Thursday night.

Police told AFP news agency that forces had been deployed to guard the area.

The attack comes as hard-line Buddhist groups step up a campaign against the lifestyles of Muslims.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21973292

[grantcart]

10. Its a serious problem and deserves serious attention by reliable sources.

Your links to objective sources differs significantly from the OP. that is a hodgepodge of events decades old.


I am not that familiar with the situation in Sri Lanka except to say that it should be considered in a population that has suffered hundreds of attacks, most of them worse than last week's bombing, over decades.

Here is an example of just one of those attacks where 600 unarmed policeman were murdered by the Tamil Tigers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_massacre_of_Sri_Lankan_Police_officers


With that in mind I have simply two observations:

1) I am astonished how every single incident that is disfavorable to the Sri Lankan Buddhist community is well reported when the terrorist campaign against them (really the start of modern terrorism against civilian populations) is almost unheard of in the west.

2) Given the past history of Sri Lanka it doesn't excuse the Buddhists for bad actions, and I am guessing that it is a deviant small number that are causing the problem. It does however show that the even more reprehensible actions by some Buddhists in Burma are even more senseless and without any similar historical justification.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. You seem to be worried about events of 20 years ago

and the fight between the Tamils and the Sinhalese - vicious on both sides, and in which the Sinhalese were victorious in 2009 (and the UN is looking into the massacres they perpetrated at the end of it).

The part of the article I linked to in the OP is about the present day. It's about religion (hence this being in the Religion group). The news stories I have now linked to back up exactly what Tariq Ali said.

I am not that familiar with the situation in Sri Lanka except to say that it should be considered in a population that has suffered hundreds of attacks, most of them worse than last week's bombing, over decades.

Well, that's just what Ali did. He gave a brief history of the fighting in Sri Lanka - which you dismiss as a 'hodgepodge of events decades old'. Did you want some background or not? However, it should be noticed that the Muslim population had nothing to do with the Tamil insurgency.

I am astonished how every single incident that is disfavorable to the Sri Lankan Buddhist community is well reported when the terrorist campaign against them (really the start of modern terrorism against civilian populations) is almost unheard of in the west.

I can't believe you can make that claim with a straight face. The Tamil Tigers were extensively reported - when they were a force. They've been defeated. And, what's worse, you put it in the present tense - when it's clear the Sinhalese have been the more violent in the past decade, and particularly now.

Given the past history of Sri Lanka it doesn't excuse the Buddhists for bad actions, and I am guessing that it is a deviant small number that are causing the problem. It does however show that the even more reprehensible actions by some Buddhists in Burma are even more senseless and without any similar historical justification.

I'm not sure how much of a minority it is.

The hardline Buddhists targeting Sri Lanka's Muslims

On a January morning a crowd of Buddhist monks storm a law college, yelling, chanting and even hitting one or two seemingly random people and pushing back the police. Furiously they shout that the exam results have been distorted to favour Muslims.

A few weeks later, apparently abetted by the police, monks attack a slaughterhouse in Dematagoda, Colombo, alleging that calves are being slaughtered inside (illegal in the capital) or the meat is improperly stored.
...
Sri Lankan monks are now taking this so-called "direct action" every few days. It is part of a growing wave of anti-Muslim activities in Sri Lanka carried out by new hardline Buddhist groups - a trend that is making many people anxious, even fearful.
...
It has become clear that the BBS has top-level support. At its ceremony to open a new training school, the guest of honour was the powerful Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, brother of the president.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21840600

[backscatter712]

9. Even Buddhism has its fundies.

All of the Buddhists I've personally met have been pretty chill, but yeah, any religion can get carried too far, and result in this insanity.