Lanka declares emergency after communal flare-up
Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency for 10 days to rein in the spread of communal violence, a government spokesman said on Tuesday, a day after Buddhists and Muslims clashed in the central district of Kandy. Tension has been growing between the two communities over the past year, with some hardline Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert and vandalising Buddhist archaeological sites.
Sri Lanka on Tuesday declared a state of emergency for 10 days after violent clashes broke out between Buddhists and minority Muslims in the country’s central Kandy district that left two persons dead.
Violence erupted on Monday following which police imposed curfew in the Theldeniya area.
President Maithripala Sirisena and the Cabinet on Tuesday decided to declare a state of emergency for 10 days following the violence prevailed in some parts of the country, Minister of Social Empowerment S B Dissanayake said.
A Gazette notification will be issued right away, he told reporters outside the President’s Secretariat, where the Cabinet meeting was held.
“There are allegations that the law was not implemented to minimise the impact of these tense situations. Now, the Police and Army personnel had been deployed to respective areas to beef up security,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Mirror. Dissanayake said the President could decide at the end of the 10 days, whether to extend the state of emergency.
Fresh curfew was imposed on Tuesday and heavily-armed police commandos of special task force were deployed in Theldeniya and Pallekele areas of Kandy district where riots have left two dead and homes and businesses of the minority community in ruins.
According to police, the elite special task force was deployed in the area after riots broke out following the death of an assault victim, a Sinhalese, who was attacked by the members of the minority community.
They said on February 22, the man was admitted to a hospital following an attack.
He succumbed to his injuries on March 3, after which the attackers arrested and were remanded to police custody till Wednesday.
The violence in Kandy was unleashed by a group people who had come from outside and not by the people in the area, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament on Tuesday.
Sri Lanka has a long history of state of emergency during the LTTE rebellion both in the south and the Tamil minority dominated north and east of the island.
“We decided to take strong action to control the situation and to deal strongly with all wrong doers,” senior minister Rauff Hakeem, who is also the leader of the main Muslim party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), told reporters.
Tension has been on the rise in Sri Lanka since 2012, said to have been fuelled by hardline Buddhists. In November last, riots in the south of the island left one man dead and homes and vehicles damaged.
In June 2014, riots between Buddhists and Muslims left four dead and many injured. The violence was instigated by a Buddhist extremist group whose leaders are on trial accused of instigating religious conflict.
The Sinhalese are a mainly Buddhist ethnic group making up nearly three-quarters of Sri Lanka’s 21 million people, while Muslims are just 10 per cent of the country's population.
Meanwhile, the Board of Control for Cricket in India(BCCI) said that the Trination T20 series in Sri Lanka, also involving the Indian cricket team, will continue despite the government imposing a state of emergency following communal violence.