Sri Lanka Terrorizes Muslims In Response To Terrorism

Culled From The Economist

THE CHARGEs sound silly but the consequences are not. One Muslim lady’s crime was to wear a shirt printed with a ship’s helm. Her accusers said it looked like the wheel of dharma, so she must be mocking Buddhism, the religion of the majority.

A young Muslim man was nabbed for having three SIM cards in his pocket, and a broken memory card. True, he worked in a phone shop, but police insisted he must have snapped the memory card to hide nefarious contents. A rich Muslim doctor was accused of having secretly sterilised 4,000 women by pinching their Fallopian tubes. More than 700 of the supposed victims have complained, enraged by rumours of a fertility “jihad” against non-Muslims.

Just over a month ago, on Easter morning, jihadist terrorists killed more than 250 people around Sri Lanka in a series of suicide-bombings. It is not surprising that since the attacks, jittery police have arrested more than 2,000 people, nearly all of them Muslim. But with suspicion among the public running high, calls for extra vigilance soon morphed into harsher demands. A Buddhist monk threatened to fast to death unless three prominent Muslim officials, accused of having links to terrorists, resigned. Instead, on June 3rd, all nine Muslim ministers, as well as two Muslim provincial governors, quit in protest.