Sri Lanka arrests Buddhist monk after protest against Rohingya Muslims
A Sri Lankan court remanded a Buddhist monk in custody on Monday after charging him with leading hardline nationalists in a protest against 31 Rohingya Muslim asylum seekers last week, forcing the refugees to flee a U.N. safe house, police said.
The police have so far remanded seven people on several charges including creating communal disharmony, attacking police and damaging property, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara told Reuters.
The monk, Akmeemana Dayarathana, and colleagues are accused of storming into the safe house chanting “Rohingyas are terrorists”.
President Maithripala Sirisena’s government condemned the attack on the refugees as “shameful” and urged police to hunt down those responsible.
The refugees, who were arrested in April along with two suspected Indian traffickers in a boat in Sri Lankan seas, were taken into protective custody and then to a detention center outside Colombo following the protest on Tuesday.
Tension between Myanmar’s majority Buddhists and the Rohingya, most of whom are denied citizenship, has exploded several times over the past few years as old enmities, and Buddhist nationalism, surfaced with the end of decades of harsh military rule.
There has been an exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine state since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants triggered a military crackdown that the United Nations has branded “ethnic cleansing”.
(Reuters)
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reuters ought to address issues that led to the current situation where in myanmar nearly a million bengalis who have been resident since colonial times remain stateless, They have been persecuted for the past few decades and all efforts by the UNHRC and other agencies have failed bring about reconciliation. U Thant from Burma then served two terms as secreatry general to the United matio s even then he failed to mobillize is meber nations to lobby the junta to resolve the problem of Bengalis.
Sri lanka is governed by a weak coalition of tamil muslim and sinhala political parties. Its policy is one of appeasement at the expense of the sinhala majority. They came to power on a manadate to prosecute rajapaksa’s and their acolytes for corruption. The very same people who are accused of corrupion then hold cabnet portfolios now. Rhe governent being weak mebers of the cuurent government is being accused of corruption. They were expected to hold provincial councils yest they failed to do so under various pretexts. Most likely they would use the same crroked procedures to abandon the democratic process for good.
The ~refugees” have been in Lanka for a while. The UNHRC ran a covert operation to provide a safe house for these refugees in collusion with the fovernment and there is little doubt the UNHRC must have bribed the prime minister. The people have evry right to protest against the housing of the refugees and Sei Lankan population is Buddgist accounting for about 70 percent and reuters has distorted this fact. Inapite of this protest the government nor the UN has made any comment on as to how this problem is to be resolved.
Is the UNITED NATIONS going to send peace keepers to sri lanka unilaterally