One Country One Racist Agenda

By Hilmy Ahamed –NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Hilmy Ahamed

“The Constitution and Penal Code of Sri Lanka protects religious freedom and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of a person’s faith, and the law recognises the 4 religions of Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity”.

Muslims in Sri Lanka are dismayed at the President’s gazette notification appointing a 13-member Presidential Task Force on ‘One country, One Law’. The Task Force has been vested with studying the implementation of the concept; One Country, One Law within Sri Lanka.

The Presidential Task Force is chaired by twice convicted Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thero of the Bodu Bala Sena .His appointment as head of a panel to review legal reforms is an insult to law makers, legal fraternity and all citizens of Sri Lanka. The Ministry of Justice during the last two years has drafted a number of legal amendments towards improving the justice system and delays in concluding cases in courts of law. What knowledge, expertise or experience does this priest have to review judicial reforms that has been undertaken by the Justice Ministry under law reforms with the assistance of eminent legal luminaries? According to the Hon. Minister of Justice, Ali Sabry, over 50 laws have been reviewed by his ministry and proposals for reforms have been completed. The legal fraternity including the Bar Association of Sri Lanka should protest the appointment of this priest who has no knowledge of the law, and has breached the law many times in the past.

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), which probed the Easter Sunday attacks of 2019 has in Chapter 22 under the heading, ‘Contributory Factors’, recommended that the Attorney General consider whether criminal proceedings can be instituted against Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thero. It had also recommended that the Bodu Bala Sent (BBS) be proscribed because its actions pose a threat to religious harmony. Observing that the Thero’s actions and hate speech contributed to Muslim youth taking up to extremism and joining Zahran’, the PCoI says: “It was in evidence that Zahran used the speeches and actions of the Thero to rally Muslim youth to his extremist ideology”. With no respect for his own Commision, this violent monk has been tasked to preside over a law Commission by the President himself.

With the end of the long protracted separatist war against the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam in May 2009, there was a reemergence of ethno-religious majoritarianism and anti-minority hatred, especially towards Muslims and Christians in Sri Lanka. Threats and intimidation became the norm when minorities tried to practice the fundamentals of their faith. Muslims have had to endure unprecedented violence from certain Buddhist extremist vigilante groups, mostly led by men in yellow robes. They are all crimes under the ICCPR and the country’s laws, but the State and the Police have chosen to ignore these crimes, perhaps out of reverence for the robe, emboldening these elements to continue their attacks overtly and covertly with impunity.

The first architect of this hate and terror campaign is none other than the controversial monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero. His anti Muslim campaign resulted in violence in Aluthgama, Gintota, Digana and Ampara, which cost lives and several billions in damages to the Muslim community. The immunity offered to this violent monk by successive governments proved that there was no equality before the law when the perpetrators happened to be Buddhist priests and their cohorts. We see the One Country One law rhetoric as an attempt to destroy the multi cultural, multi religious and multi ethnic fabric of Sri Lanka. Perhaps their objective is to obliterate plurality, and enforce and establish the identity of the majority on all citizens; in other words, assimilation.

The appointment of the Presidential Task Force to create one country one law comes after a February 2021 Cabinet decision to amend the country’s Muslim personal laws. Sri Lanka also has the Kandyan Law and the Thesawalamai Law, pertaining respectively to the upcountry Sinhalese and the Northern Tamil community. The four Muslims included in the committee are suspected to be ‘hand picked’ by Gnanasara Thero. They are widely known to have been working with him to vilify the All Ceylon Jamiathul Ulema, the country’s foremost group of Islamic scholars. One of them was in the forefront to close down the Muslims’ only degree awarding institute which offers general degrees in addition to theological studies. These representatives belong to a particular sect and in no way represent the Muslim community in its entirety. Since the election of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a small section of people belonging to this sect has been in the forefront in dividing Muslims on ideological grounds.

This Thero, who is the unfortunate choice of the President to head the ‘One Country One Law’ Commision to advice on the law reform, has been convicted in courts of law multiple times. He has been fined Rs.10,000 for drunk driving and causing bodily harm to a three wheel driver in a traffic accident in which he (The Buddhist Monk) was driving under the influence of liquor. In 2018, he was convicted on four charges for contempt of court and was given a six-year jail term, of which he served only nine months until former President Maithripala Sirisena pardoned him, in a move which was widely criticised. Gnanasara Thero was allowed to cause terror and hate with impunity against Muslims during the previous rule of President Mahinda Rajapaksa from 2005 to 2015. There are several other cases where he managed to buy time because of immunity offered by ruling politicians. The Muslim community has lodged over 150 police complaints in various Police stations across the country against this monk for many incidents of intimidation and violence.

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