March 30, 2013, 7:19 pm


by Zacki Jabbar

The Defence Ministry was assisting  an extremist group responsible for harassing and attacking religious minorities, UNP MP Mangala Samaraweera 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 was helping Sinhala extremists to create confusion and mayhem in the country, he alleged.

The MP 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 religions of their choice, without being harassed. If, it allowed the current situation to develop into a full blown conflict, then its intentions would be clear to the whole world, he noted.

Samaraweera, said that the extremist group which was 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 Lankan Muslims who have been citizens of this country for centuries, ended in violence.

The MP urged the government to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it was a signatory to.

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

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