By Dayan Jayatilleka

On September 15, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the release of the US State Department’s Report on International Religious Freedoms 2004. Punctiliously researched and documented, soberly written, it contains a section several pages long and quite critical of the situation in Sri Lanka. Significantly it is also sharply critical of the LTTE.

It would be the height of civic irresponsibility for the Sri Lankan mass media not to carry the full text, also in Sinhalese and Tamil translation, given its source, its implications and the possibility that our more myopic politicians and baser drives may take us into a minefield.

In the report’s Executive Summary the reference to Sri Lanka comes in ‘Part I: Barriers to International Religious Freedom’, in the section “ State Neglect of Societal Discrimination Against, or Persecution of, Religious Minorities’, and reads as follows:

“ There was an overall deterioration of religious freedom due to the actions of extremists. In late 2003 and early 2004, Buddhist extremists destroyed Christian churches and harassed and abused pastors and congregants. There were over 100 accounts of attacks on Christian church buildings and members, several dozen of which were confirmed by diplomatic observers. NGOs have reported that in the majority of cases the police failed to protect churches and citizens from attack. In May an MP of the Jathika Hela Urumaya party presented a draft anti-conversion bill to Parliament. In June the Minster of Buddhist affairs presented a separate draft anti-conversion bill to the cabinet. It was not formally approved; however it was sent to the attorney General for a review that was ongoing at the end of the period covered by the report. There has been considerable public discussion of the bills, and many government officials expressed their concern about such legislation”.

The website of the US Embassy in Japan carries in its section ‘US Policy and Issues’, a story by David Shelby, Washington staff writer, on the 2004 International Religious Freedoms Report. The story is posted on the State Dept’s other more general websites as well. The pertinent quote reads:

“Sri Lanka’s constitution permits the free practice of religion as well, but according to the report, actions of religious extremists have resulted in a deterioration of religious freedom. In particular, the report raised concerns about attacks on Christian churches by Buddhist groups. While the government condemned such attacks, it has apparently done little to prevent them from continuing”.

Just two sample quotes from the international press will provide a glimpse of the damage our extremists and those who pander to them, have inflicted on the image of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese and the Buddhists. ‘In…Sri Lanka there was “state neglect of societal discrimination against or persecution of minority religions”.’ (AFP, Washington, in ‘The Australian’, Sept 17, p.12) “ Sri Lanka’s Constitution permits the free practice of religion as well, but according to the report, actions of religious extremists have resulted in a deterioration of religious freedom. In particular the report pointed out instances of attacks on Christian churches by Buddhist groups” (Indo-Asian News Service, Washington, Sept 16).

Most important is the statement in the Report of the US Government’s conduct, which implicitly indicates a cost if Sri Lanka resumes its journey on this path:

“Embassy representatives met repeatedly with Government officials at the highest level, including with President Kumaratunga, to express the US Government’s concern about the attacks on Christian churches and to discuss the anti-conversion issue. On several occasions the Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, Democracy, Labour and the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom discussed the anti-conversion issue with the country’s ambassador to the United States”.

A clear signal: don’t cross the line by turning either Bill into law, and don’t burn churches.

Burning Bridges

In military science, bridges are of both tactical and strategic value. So it is in societies. Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious minorities are the country’s cultural and psychological bridges to the world. They are also our bridges to one another. But we have been burning our bridges (sometimes literally).

The Hill-country Tamils are the bridge between the largely Tamil Northeast and the largely Sinhalese South. The Muslims, as Tamil speakers but not Tamils, have affinities with both Sinhalese and Tamils. The Christians are the only social group that embraces both Sinhalese and Tamils; indeed three of our four main ethnic groups were represented in Christian community: the Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers.

In our polarised context, the photographs of the Madhu feast this year provide a unique example of community which a quarter century of deadly conflict and intractable crisis have been unable to efface: Sinhala and Tamil clergy sharing the same altar, Sinhala and Tamil people of all ages at prayer together, and a temporary demilitarisation in the immediate vicinity by both armies. In Brisbane Australia, Sinhalese, Tamils and Burghers join annually in replicating the Madhu procession.

Soul Superpower?

After the Supreme Court decision on the JHU draft bill and before the release of the International Religious Freedoms report, the State Department hosted a delegation from the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, an interfaith, international public interest law firm whose clients range from Buddhists to Zoroastrians. The Beckett Fund’s tightly argued briefing to the State Department said that in a sequel to Sinhala Only in ’56, the current bills and social mood constitute one of ‘Buddhism Only’. In a still more recent exposition, the Deputy Head of the Becket Fund argued that the US must use its leverage on the garments issue, and link progress in that area to greater religious liberty in Sri Lanka. (See the online Asian Tribune for this documentation).

Here is a bit of arithmetic for the JHU, the UPFA’s Buddha Sasana Minister, his UNP predecessor and ‘shadow’, Mr Lokubandara, and the JVP’s “1505 commission” witch hunters to meditate upon, in the light of the State Department strictures. The basic demographic fact that the Tamils had 50 million co-ethnics in neighbouring India, the region’s superpower, imposed a heavy punishment on the Sri Lankan state and its majority for having been myopically discriminatory. This time it isn’t the Injuns it’s the cowboys: the country with the world’s largest number of Christians is the USA, sole superpower and mightiest power in history.

What could be the costs of continuing to pick on the Christian minority that has two billion co-religionists (one billion Catholics alone), 1/3^rd of humanity? If the majority in Sri Lanka were Muslims or Hindus, with access to the sheer numbers, wealth, natural resources, market, self-sacrificial militancy and dispersed global presence of those communities, then such confrontation may be sane. But that just ain’t the case.

The report will not go away with the Bush administration, which I fear, doesn’t look like its going away (damn those Chechen terrorists). If it’s a Bush presidency, the Christian Evangelicals have influence; if it’s Kerry, it’s the Catholics. I really don’t recommend that the Stars and Stripes be burnt in Vihara Maha Devi Park (by the way, why do the JHU demonstrations display the longest skirts on the planet, arguably longer than some chadors?) or that JHU or PNM/JVP monks besiege the American embassy demanding that the US Govt ban the State Department report!

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