{"id":58203,"date":"2018-03-07T21:39:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T02:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=58203"},"modified":"2018-03-07T21:51:10","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T02:51:10","slug":"four-mosques-37-houses-46-shops-and-35-vehicles-damaged-in-the-anti-muslim-attacks-up-to-march-5th-in-kandy-district-according-to-central-province-councillor-hidayath-saththar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=58203","title":{"rendered":"Four Mosques, 37 Houses, 46 Shops and 35 Vehicles Damaged in the Anti-Muslim Attacks Up To March 5th in Kandy District according to Central Province Councillor Hidayath Saththar."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mujib Mashal and Dharisha Bastians<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s government imposed a nationwide state of emergency on Tuesday after mob attacks against the minority Muslim population in a central district, violence that has highlighted the country\u2019s fragility as it tries to recover from decades of civil war.<\/p>\n

The unrest in the district of Kandy began on Sunday as angry mobs made up of the majority Sinhalese ethnic group attacked dozens of Muslim businesses and houses and at least one mosque. At least one person was killed. Hundreds of security personnel, including special forces, were deployed to Kandy on Monday and a curfew was declared there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Officials feared that the death of a 27-year-old man \u2014 who was trapped inside a burning house and who described the attack on the building in an audio recording \u2014 could provoke violence across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have decided to declare a state of emergency to ensure these clashes and tensions don\u2019t spread elsewhere in the country,\u201d said Dayasiri Jayasekera, a government spokesman.<\/p>\n

Mr. Jayasekera said the state of emergency would last 10 days and that law enforcement would also act against \u201call communal hate speech posts on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were mistakes on the part of the local police in implementing the law. Some of the attacks happened in front of them,\u201d Mr. Jayasekera said.<\/p>\n

The victim was identified as Abdul Basith, who had just gotten a job as a local reporter for a radio station. He lived with his parents, who ran a small shop selling slippers on the first floor of their two-story house. The house was burned to the ground, witnesses said.<\/p>\n

Fayaz Samsudeen, Mr. Basith\u2019s father, said they had escaped the first floor when the fire started. But his son was on the second floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the fire started, he screamed for help and asked people to help us get out of the house. There is no way to get outside from upstairs, but we thought he would have escaped,\u201d Mr. Samsudeen said. \u201cIn the morning when we came back to see our house, we found his body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Basith\u2019s uncle, Mohammed Maleek, said he was in communication with Mr. Basith in his final minutes and that his nephew had assured him he would be safe because the police were everywhere.<\/p>\n

In an audio message sent to his uncle, Mr. Basith described the scene as the mob could be heard outside. The audio was circulating in Kandy after his death and as a sign of its authenticity, a cabinet minister who had visited the scene referred to the message in Parliament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have broken all the doors in our house, large stones are falling inside,\u201d Mr. Basith said in the message. \u201cHello, yes I am inside our house and they are burning something. There are flames coming inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, his voice grew tense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have burned the house,\u201d he said. \u201cThe house is burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest tensions, coming a week after similar mob attacks against Muslims in an eastern region, erupted after a Sinhalese truck driver was injured by a group of Muslim men in what has been described as a road rage incident. The man died from his injuries on Saturday.<\/p>\n

After his death, officials and Kandy residents said, extremist Buddhist monks who have incited communal violence in the past descended on the area, offering their condolences. But many believed that their presence amid the tensions fueled the violent backlash against the Muslims.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo controversial Buddhist monks who have been at the center of similar anti-minority clashes before had been in the area on Sunday night,\u201d said Rishad Bathiudeen, Sri Lanka\u2019s minister of industry and commerce who was in Kandy to survey the damage. \u201cWe demand their arrest for inciting communal violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Bathiudeen said that after the truck driver died, the police in Kandy were warned about the rising tensions and urged to send reinforcements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deputy inspector general told us to tell the Muslims to stay at home and close up their shops in the Digana town,\u201d Mr. Bathiudeen said. \u201cThe Muslims stayed at home and the mobs came and burned the deserted shops.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are minority communities supposed to feel when the police stand by and watch while their houses and their businesses are destroyed by violent mobs?\u201d said Mr. Bathiudeen, who is Muslim. \u201cWe are urging our people to remain calm. But when their houses and livelihoods go up in flames, how long will they bear it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Four mosques, 37 houses, 46 shops and 35 vehicles have been damaged in the attacks, according to Hidayath Saththar, a member of the provincial council in Central Province, where Kandy is located.<\/p>\n

Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka\u2019s prime minister, told the Parliament on Tuesday that local community elders, both Buddhists and Muslims, had tried to ease tensions after the driver\u2019s death through dialogue. <\/p>\n

\u201cExtremists\u201d from outside had come in to the area to stir violence in what he called \u201corganized acts of sabotage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us who have experienced a 30-year war know the value of peace, harmony and unity,\u201d Mr. Wickremesinghe said.<\/p>\n

Anti-Muslim violence has been on the rise in Sri Lanka in recent years as the country\u2019s leaders have struggled to rein in the nationalist fervor of the majority Sinhalese Buddhists. President Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s fragile coalition government has been accused of emboldening extremists by failing to hold groups that incite hatred to account.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka\u2019s long civil war ended in 2009 with the bloody crushing of an insurgency by the Tamil ethnic minority. But observers say many of the underlying causes of the war still remain and the country\u2019s relative stability could further deteriorate if the government does not win trust of the minority groups by providing protection and justice. Thousands of families, mostly Tamil, are still looking for loved ones who were forcibly disappeared or trying to take back land taken over by the military.<\/p>\n

One recent example of how tense relations remain was an episode involving the country\u2019s military attach\u00e9 to the United Kingdom. From the steps of the Sri Lankan high commission in London, video cameras captured Brig. Priyanka Fernando, who was in uniform, making a throat-slitting gesture to Tamil protesters gathered there, which many saw as a threat.<\/p>\n

The foreign ministry suspended him from his job but the president stepped in to reinstate him.
\nEventually, Brigadier Fernando was recalled from London \u2014 not to be disciplined but for his own security, the army said<\/p>\n

Courtesy:New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Mujib Mashal and Dharisha Bastians Sri Lanka\u2019s government imposed a nationwide state of emergency on Tuesday after mob attacks against the minority Muslim population in a central district, violence that has highlighted the country\u2019s fragility as it tries to recover from decades of civil war. The unrest in the district of Kandy began on …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Four Mosques, 37 Houses, 46 Shops and 35 Vehicles Damaged in the Anti-Muslim Attacks Up To March 5th in Kandy District according to Central Province Councillor Hidayath Saththar.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58204,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58203\/revisions\/58204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}