A group of Sri Lankan expatriates in the capital, comprising Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, will send a petition to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa urging him to stop the ongoing hatred campaign against Muslims in Sri Lanka.
Following Friday prayers in Riyadh yesterday, Sri Lankans of all faiths and from all walks of life were seen signing the petition addressed to their country's president.
Sri Lanka’s minority Muslim community has recently come under intense pressure from a hard-line Buddhist organization, which is spreading a malicious campaign against the Muslims of Sri Lanka.
The Buddhist Power Force, more commonly known as the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), has lashed out at the country’s second-largest minority, which makes up 9.2 percent of the population, demanding an outright ban on several Muslim practices including the traditional dress code of women (abaya) and dietary guidelines.
The group of expatriates formed to counter the hate campaign will hand over the petition to the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh for it to be handed to the island's president.
In a letter to the Sri Lankan government last week, the Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation expressed its concerns over the escalating ethnic tension in the country, particularly in the central province of Buwelikade.
Addressing a news conference in Colombo recently, BBS General Secretary Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara said Muslim attire was creating all kinds of social and security issues. “We will fight until this attire is banned from this country, so that there is no chance to unofficially enforce Islamic Shariah law in Sri Lanka, which is a Buddhist nation,” he said.
In the days since the announcement of the campaign, several Muslim women have complained of harassment from unidentified men. On March 15, four young Muslim women dressed in the traditional black cloak and head covering, were dragged by their dresses across the road by several men at the main Railway Station in Colombo. Several passers-by came to their rescue by chasing the men, who eventually fled.
“A Muslim woman who had been walking down a road one afternoon was spat at by a man, who used foul language and asked her to leave Sri Lanka and go back to some Arab country,” an acquaintance of the victim, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Asia Times Online.
Lankans counter hate campaign
