ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY IS NECESSARY TO FORESTALL ANOTHER COMMUNAL CONFLICT--JEHAN PERERA
23 June 2014
The government appears to have woken up to the gravity of the problem posed by repeated attacks on the Muslim community. The police have announced that they will not permit meetings that cause ethnic or religious hatred to be generated. This new policy is to be welcomed to the degree that it is implemented in fact, and is not simply restricted to rhetoric. The police have become a scapegoat for permitting the BBS to hold the public rally that ended up in anti Muslim violence. However, there is a doubt whether the government will instruct the police to go ahead and arrest and prosecute those who instigated the violence and that this will be done on the ground. Although President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself has denounced those who engage in violence, the indications are that the momentum in favour of continuation of sporadic violence that keeps the country on tenterhooks will be hard to reverse in these circumstances.
The government appears to have woken up to the gravity of the problem posed by repeated attacks on the Muslim community. The police have announced that they will not permit meetings that cause ethnic or religious hatred to be generated. This new policy is to be welcomed to the degree that it is implemented in fact, and is not simply restricted to rhetoric. The police have become a scapegoat for permitting the BBS to hold the public rally that ended up in anti Muslim violence. However, there is a doubt whether the government will instruct the police to go ahead and arrest and prosecute those who instigated the violence and that this will be done on the ground. Although President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself has denounced those who engage in violence, the indications are that the momentum in favour of continuation of sporadic violence that keeps the country on tenterhooks will be hard to reverse in these circumstances.