What Next? Postscript To Anti-Muslim Riots
Sumanasiri Liyanage
The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has realized some damage control operations are needed to repair its tarred image as a result of the recent anti-Muslim riots in the island. Minister Senarathna gave an open apology to Muslims in his electorate, Beruwala, where ugly riots took place. GoSL promised it would rebuild houses and properties destroyed by the mob. Rev Kirama Wimalajothi resigned from the leadership of the Bodu Bala Sena(Army of the Buddhist Power). President reiterated his banal statement that his government stands for every Sri Lankan irrespective of her/ his nationality or religion. Nonetheless, like in 1983, the blame was placed on the so-called extremism of minorities.
Responding to his mother’s more realistic observation –“I don’t expect I will see peace in my life time”- Shivan, the main character of Shyam Selvadurai’s recent novel –The Hungry Ghosts- anticipated “I hope one side wins and ends all this, for the sake of the poor people caught in between”. Shivan’s surrealistic image in fact materialized in the dawn of May 18, 2009 at a narrow sea belt in Mullivaikkal. It seems that both the mother and the son were partly correct since they appeared to have two different things in mind. For Shivan it was the end of armed conflict and for the mother it was peace writ large. The recent events unfolded in Aluthgama, Dharga Town and Beruwala have time and again showed that peace had not yet arrived in Sri Lanka, not definitely to poor and marginalized people. Muslims inhabited in those South Western towns were subjected to vicious and inhumane attacks by ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ mobs instigated by Bodu Bala Sena (army of Buddhist power) that receives both open and tacit blessings of Mahinda Rajapaksa regime. Can the events in these three south-western towns be explicated as isolated and exceptional incidents as the government had been trying to paint them? Are both parties (Sinhala Buddhists and Muslims) to be blamed equally as some government ministers had openly claimed and the country’s defense establishment had indicated? Read More
