SRI LANKA: Islamic Convert’s Detention Sparks Debate on Tolerance
Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Apr 8, 2010 (IPS) – Issues of religious tolerance, the rule of law and freedom of expression in this mainly Buddhist country are being thrown into debate by the detention of a Sri Lankan Buddhist woman who converted to Islam and was writing a book on her conversion.
Sarah Malathi Perera, a 38-year old migrant worker who has lived in Bahrain for 20 years, was detained by police in Colombo under emergency regulations on Mar. 20, ostensibly over a book she had written and published on her conversion to Islam.
But police have since given different versions of the reasons for her detention, saying that the book was offensive to Buddhism or that she was being probed for links to Tamil militants and Musim extremist groups.
On Tuesday, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody was even more vague. “She has been detained under emergency regulations but I don’t have details as to why she is in detention. Let me check and let you know,” he told IPS. He was the same official who earlier gave different reasons for Perera’s detention.
The incident reflects a cultural and social intolerance that Sri Lankan society has never previously experienced, argues Dayan Jayatillaka, former vice president of the U.N. Human Rights Council and former chairman of the intergovernmental working group on the implementation of the Durban declaration against racism.
“How (else) should we begin to define a country in which an unarmed young woman, a woman who has not harmed anyone, is detained in a police station under emergency laws or anti-terrorism laws, for writing a book, and a book which does not call for violence against anyone?” Jayatillaka said in an interview.
Lakshman Gunasekera, president of the Sri Lanka chapter of the South Asia Free Media Association, says that as journalists, they are concerned that Perera has been arrested under emergency regulations. “Although I have not read her book, this is an issue that concerns freedom of expression,” he said.
He added that this kind of reaction is more often seen in situations of serious religious fundamentalism and extremism like Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan, where writers have been accused of blasphemy against Islam and subjected to verbal and physical attacks.
“This is a country where all religions are respected and tolerated. So why this intolerance?” said a women’s rights activist who declined to be named. Perera returned to Sri Lanka three months back to settle a land dispute concerning her elderly mother in Colombo. She has said she has analysed the spiritual substance of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity, and published a book entitled ‘From Darkness to Light: Questions and Answer’.
Sri Lanka’s 20 million people comprises 73.7 percent Buddhists, 10.9 percent Hindus, 7.6 percent Muslims and 6.2 percent Christians, and the rest from smaller ethnic groups. Non-Buddhists have the constitutional right to freely practise their religion.
But in recent years, the Jathika Hela Urumaya or JHU (National Heritage Party), a extreme racist party with little support in the country but with huge influence on President Mahinda Rajapaksa, has along with allied or similar groups been suspected of being behind attacks against largely Christian places of worship.
Perera, who wears a ‘hijab’ (dress that covers the body from head to toe), alleges that her arrest came after the courier company she was planning to use to send her books to Bahrain, tipped off the JHU, which in turn informed the police. JHU officials were not immediately available for comment.
Lakshan Dias, Perera’s lawyer, says his client has been informed that she is being detained on charges of offending Buddhism and possible links to Tamil militants and overseas Muslim militant groups. “She has been told that she has been detained under a 30-day detention order under emergency regulations. She has not been informed when she would be produced before a magistrate,” he said.
Perera’s case points to a breakdown in law and order more than religious intolerance, some say. “People get arrested over some ideosyncratic issue and then once that happens, the system takes over and you can’t get out,” said Jehan Perera, a columnist in the ‘Daily Mirror’ newspaper.
Under the Sri Lankan Penal Code, offences relating to religion include acts such as damaging or defiling a place of worship, uttering words or sounds or making gestures with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings and trespassing in places of worship.
Jayatillake said the response to Perera’s book could have been a critical review of it, not an arrest. “Isn’t this against both Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on freedom of expression as well as the rights and freedoms recognised by the Sri Lankan Constitution? Who decides on arrests like this and what is the law transgressed?” Equally worrisome to some is the government’s use of emergency laws almost a year after its defeat of the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
“The Sri Lankan emergency means that people enjoy any personal or legal rights solely at executive convenience and discretion,” said an activist who requested anonymity. “Accordingly, Ms Perera has been detained without trial, charge, bail or much access to family or lawyers and any legal or procedural safeguards.” (END)
“US says Lashkar in Lanka”- Reply
Latheef Farook
Citing PTI report Admiral Robert Willard, Commander of the US Pacific Command in his testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, has said, in response to a question from Senator George Lemieux, that the Lasker e Taiba group is expanding and specifically positioning in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
He has also said that “we have certainly knowledge of their influence within the region beyond the countries that I just mentioned. The extent of that influence is what we’re taking under study,”
Now that the government has rejected these reports saying there was no evidence to prove that the group was in the island it is extremely important that the US provide details about this so called LET influence in Sri Lanka right away in view of the serious Implications of this disclosure to Sri Lankan Muslims,
That is assuming Robert Willard is speaking the truth and is not doing the dirty work for his country to target Muslim minorities in these countries.
In this regard it is worthy to note that Muslims in Sri Lanka, as rightly pointed out by the island’s former Chief Justice Sarath N Silva, remains the only community which never took to arms to realize their grievances even at the peak of their sufferings during the ethnic war when they were evicted from their homes, their lands grabbed, their livelihood deprived, kidnapped, tortured and indiscriminately killed.
This alone would have been cause enough for any group to take to arms. However Muslims refrained from succumbing to violence. There were, however, a few Muslims who acquired weapons to defend themselves against the LTTE atrocities, but they disappeared even before LTTE disappeared. After the elimination of the LTTE the remaining few armed Muslims handed over their weapons to the authorities.
The question now is why the Muslims should take to arms now under LET or any other banner as the LTTE terrorism is defeated and people from all communities are hoping and praying that communities are brought together and move this war battered country ahead to ensure peaceful better future.
Under these circumstances Willard’s statement must be taken with a pinch of salt.
For example, within days after the 9/11 events in New York in 2001, former US President George Bush, together with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, accused Al Qaeda of destroying the WTC without any proper inquiry. Exploiting the mood in its wake Bush blackmailed the shocked and confused world, created a coalition and invaded within 27 days the war battered and impoverished Afghanistan where he slaughtered innocent and poverty stricken Afghans in one of the most barbarous military ventures of its kind in modern history.
More importantly Willard’s deception must be viewed in the backdrop of the lies and disinformation that the US media, kowtowing its government agenda, spread to create ‘proper’ environment for the senseless attack on Iraq and the slaughter of its unarmed civilians.
The US accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction which, Bush and Blair claimed, threatened the west and invaded Iraq in 2003 despite United Nations weapons inspectors repeatedly stating that Iraq did not possess such weapons. They turned this once almost developed country into a waste land. Around 1.4 million innocent Iraqis killed so far, hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women were tortured, women indiscriminately raped, infrastructure destroyed and birth, marriage, death, land and vehicle registration offices burnt causing chaos in the society.
Around four million Iraqis who lived in peace were forced into refugee camps in neighboring countries to languish in sub human conditions. More than two million Iraqis were made refugees in their own country. Shiites and Sunnis were put against each other turning Iraq into a killing field where, with the help of a puppet government, western oil companies started looting the country’s oil wealth while the Iraqis starve. And now it turns out that since he stepped down as Prime Minister Tony Blair has pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from his secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium.
Thus the crooks are in Willard’s camp.
The so called US led Western war against terrorism turned out to be a war against Islam and Muslims. Now after Afghanistan and Iraq they have turned their attention on Pakistan which is bleeding .The question is whether this statement is a pretext for US plan to expand its agenda to cover Muslim living as minorities in Sri Lanka and other countries in the region.
The frightening situation worldwide caused by the US led so called war on terrorism is such today that every Muslim with a beard and a head cap and every Muslim woman with a Hijab have been branded as terrorist and humiliated. Muslims have been attacked and killed all over under various pretexts. Muslim refugees walking in sheer desperation in search of shelter with their meager belongings have become frequent common sight worldwide.
Helpless Muslims worldwide are seething with anger at the west.
This is the reason why Sri Lankan Muslims take serious note of Admiral Robert Willard’s disclosures .Sri Lanka has its own share of anti Muslim elements who could exploit this statement to suit their own agendas. So if Wilfred was speaking the truth he must come up with hard evidence so that the authorities in the island can verify.
srilankaguardian
Writer Sarah, still in detention
Blow for author
A BAHRAIN-BASED author arrested in Sri Lanka for allegedly offending Buddhism suffered a new blow yesterday after she was remanded in custody for another two weeks.
Sarah Malanie Perera, detained in the capital Colombo, had been held without charge since being detained on March 20.
Her family had hoped she would be released after appearing before judges, but was never brought to the Supreme Court.
However, she did speak to Notary Public Licences Company secretary and lawyer Lakshan Dias, who is also a human rights consultant.
The 38-year-old, who earlier converted to Islam, was detained after writing two books in Sinhalese, one of which was allegedly offensive to Lord Buddha.
Ms Perera’s lawyers filed a case at the Supreme Court in Colombo on March 30 demanding her immediate release, but it also stalled after police never brought her to court.
She had been due to leave her homeland and return to Bahrain after a three-month holiday on the day of her arrest.
MP Ibrahim Mohammed Busandal is spearheading Ms Perera’s case with the help of other MPs and Discover Islam.
“I was born in Panadura in 1971 and a Buddhist by birth,” said the author in a statement to Mr Dias.
“Later, I became a Muslim due to my personal conviction and I learned a lot on Islam and its spiritual teachings.
“I had a feeling that I was saved before I was going into spiritual disaster and believed that I owed the rest of the world to tell what I have undergone.
“Therefore, I decided to document whatever the spiritual thoughts I have.
“I composed about 17 to 19 such small articles and later decided to compile those as a booklet.
“I wrote all my articles in Singhalese as I am not very fluent in English.”
Ms Perera said she had no intention of offending anyone with her work.
“Certain things I questioned according to my knowledge and I am very much confident that I did not write any thing that insults other religion as Islam says that those who believe in it cannot insult other religions,” she told her lawyer.
“The expressions in my books are according to my beliefs and as part of my journey from Buddhism to Islam.”
Ms Perera also spoke of her fear when she was arrested trying to send a consignment of 500 of her books to Bahrain.
“Suddenly a police jeep appeared, five policemen including inspector Udaya Kumar and a woman police constable and took me into custody,” she said.
The author said for three days she was treated “harshly” and forced to remove my hijab (headscarf).
“They insisted that I had done wrong and wanted me to accept it and I continuously said that I didn’t do anything wrong according to Islam,” said Ms Perera.
“They said I am connected to Muslim militants which I denied.”
Mr Dias said police had a detention order from Sri Lanka defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksha under emergency law to hold Ms Perera for 30 days to investigate her case.
“She didn’t appear in court and if the police don’t bring her to court in two days, we will take legal action against them,” he said by telephone from Colombo.
Reports suggested she was detained as a political strategy of winning votes from the Jathika Hela Urumaya, an extremist Buddhist Sinhalese nationalist and racist organisation, ahead of tomorrow’s elections.
Police reportedly asked Sri Lanka’s most senior Buddhist to read the book, who confirmed there were no offensive words against Buddha.
Ms Perera came to Manama in 1985 to assist her elder sister Mariam, who owned a gifts and flowers shop and embraced Islam in 1999 after studying religion at Discover Islam.
Her father Norbet Perera, mother Soma and sisters Padma, Rasa, Padmani and Malanie, also converted later. aneeqa@gdn.com.bh
gulf-daily-news.com
Lanka slams US war crimes
Sri Lanka has slammed the US saying it has blood on its hands after a shocking video showed a US aircraft firing indiscriminately towards civilians in Iraq killing atleast 25 of them including two journalists. Government Defence Spokesperson Minister Keheliya Rambukwella told Daily Mirror online that while the US has been accusing Sri Lanka of human rights allegations and have repeatedly called for a war crime probe, they seem to have ‘conveniently forgotten’ its own issues in Iraq.
Minister Rambukwella also called on the US to conduct an investigation on it’s own troops before pointing fingers at developing countries.
“These are the world’s so called super powers. They have always tried to bully developing countries but have ignored the blood on their own hands. This is nothing new, it has been happening for years. They say we are guilty but we all know what happened in Iraq,” Minister Rambukwella said.
Further reacting strongly to the video Minister Rambukwella also questioned the UN on its silence and queried why the UN Secretary General was failing to appoint an expert panel to advise him on the US involvement in Iraq. He also said that it was due to this reason, that the Sri Lankan government had always questioned the credibility of the ‘strong statements’ which were released by the west and the UN against Sri Lanka.
The investigative organization WikiLeaks, this week released military video of what it describes as three incidents of an “indiscriminate slaying” by U.S. forces near Baghdad on July 12, 2007. WikiLeaks said the encounters killed as many as 25 civilians, including two Reuters journalists. The U.S. military said in a statement at the time that a total of 11 people died in the strikes conducted by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The video is shot from two Apache helicopters on patrol in Iraq. The choppers were responding to reports of AK-47 gunfire in the suburb of New Baghdad when military personnel on board spotted a group of nine to 12 people walking through a courtyard. The military contends that the U.S. followed the appropriate “Rules of Engagement” during the incidents.
The video shows military personnel aboard the Apaches indicating they spot the suspects toting several AK-47s and several RPG’s. But WikiLeaks contends that the Reuters photographers were only carrying cameras, which the military mistook for weapons. The helicopters circle multiple times before opening fire. In the second incident captured by the video, U.S. forces open fire again after a van arrives to pick up casualties from the first attack.
Later, American ground troops pull into the courtyard in an armored Humvee and appear to drive over one of the casualties. Soon after, the same helicopters spot several individuals entering a nearby building. U.S. troops receive permission to strike again, this time with Hellfire missiles. Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks, released the video at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He said the behaviour of the pilots is like they’re playing a video game. He also did not say how WikiLeaks obtained the video. A senior military official at the Department of Defense told Fox News on the condition of anonymity that “an investigation of the incidents confirmed our belief that these attacks were justified.”
“The individuals who were killed, apart from the Reuters journalists, were involved in hostile activity,” the official said. (Daily Mirror online)
Family hopeful of author’s release
THE family of a Bahrain-based author arrested in Sri Lanka for allegedly offending Buddhism hope she will be released after she appears in court today.
THE family of a Bahrain-based author arrested in Sri Lanka for allegedly offending Buddhism hope she will be released after she appears in court today.
Sarah Malanie Perera, detained in the capital Colombo, had been held without charge since she was taken into custody about two weeks ago.
The authorities have yet to give precise details of her offence, but it is understood two of her recently published books allegedly offended ethnic Sinhalese Buddhists, who account for more than 70 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 20 million population.
Ms Perera’s lawyers filed a case at the Supreme Court in Colombo last Tuesday demanding her immediate release, but it stalled as police never brought her to court.
The 38-year-old, who previously converted to Islam, was detained after writing two books in Sinhalese, allegedly offensive to Lord Buddha.
She had been due to leave her homeland and return to Bahrain after a three-month holiday on the day of her arrest.
MP Ibrahim Mohammed Busandal is spearheading Ms Perera’s case with the help of other MPs and Discover Islam.
Ms Perera was allowed to talk to her 82-year-old mother Aisha for five minutes by telephone last Wednesday, but her elder sister Mariam said the mother had been unable to eat after speaking to her.
“It’s really a relief that finally she would be taken to court, where a decision will take place,” she told the GDN.
“We are hoping that she will be released after appearing in the court for the first time in 15 days,” Ms Mariam added.
Ms Perera will be represented in court by top attorney Lakshan Dias.
“Mr Dias is really a gentleman and didn’t demand any money and said he will charge us only after Sarah is released,” said Mariam.
The family maintain that police had forcibly removed the author’s headscarf and made a video, which was being played on all Sri Lankan television channels.
The London-based Times Newspaper reported that she was detained as a political strategy of winning votes from the Jathika Hela Urumaya, an extremist Buddhist Sinhalese nationalist and racist organisation, ahead of elections on Thursday.
Police reportedly asked Sri Lanka’s most senior Buddhist to read the book, who confirmed there were no offensive words against Buddha.
Ms Perera came to Manama in 1985 to assist Mariam, who owned a gifts and flowers shop in Adliya.
She then worked as a teacher at the Child Development Centre, Juffair.
Born and brought up in a Buddhist family, she embraced Islam in 1999 after studying religion at Discover Islam.
Her father Norbet, mother Soma and sisters Padma, Rasa, Padmani and Malanie, later also converted to Islam at separate times.
Ms Perera’s books From Darkness to Light and Questions and Answers focused on her conversion to Islam and the original teachings of Buddha.
She was reportedly detained after trying to send copies to Bahrain through a cargo company. aneeqa@gdn.com.bh
Gulf Daily News
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