Defence Ministry funding attacks on religious minorities

The Defence Ministry was funding extremist groups responsible for harassing and attacking religious minorities, the UNP charged yesterday. Sri Lanka was going through a very tragic phase. Instead of uniting all communities with the end of a near thirty year old war, the Defence Ministry had provided Sinhala extremists with the required assistance including finances to create confusion and mayhem in the country,
Matara District UNP MP, Mangala Samaraweera alleged at a news conference in Colombo.

MP Samaraweera said that with the Rajapaksa regime losing the economic war and being pilloried on the international stage for human rights violations and failure to implement its very own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commissions recommendations, an attempt was being made to divert attention by creating internal disturbances.

The only way for the government to clear its name was to introduce laws that safeguard people’s right to practice in peace religions of their choice. If it allowed the current situation to develop into a full blown conflict, then its intentions would be clear to the whole world, the MP observed.

Samaraweera said that the extremist groups who were unreasonably targeting Muslim places of religious worship and their business interests, had failed to realize that the majority of Sri Lankan’s working in the Middle East were Sinhala Buddhists. He queried what their plight would be if the hate campaign against Sri Lankan Muslims who have been citizens of this country for centuries, ended in violence.

He urged the government to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which it was signatory to.

The government was fast losing support abroad. If urgent action was not taken to device from the dangerous path that was being followed, it would be the people who would have to ultimately pay the price, MP Samaraweera warned.