COLOMBO: Sri Lanka boosted security for Muslim-owned businesses across the country yesterday after a clothing store was torched by hundreds of Buddhist hardliners, escalating religious tensions.
Police said commandos of the elite Special Task Force were deployed in the Colombo suburb of Pepiliyana where mobs from the ethnic Sinhalese majority stoned and later set fire to a store and warehouse owned by Muslims late on Thursday.
“We are deploying more mobile patrols in vulnerable areas” across the country, a senior police officer told AFP, declining to be named. He said extra police would be guarding popular Muslim-owned shops.
The government in a statement urged people not to be provoked.
“Be aware of anti-democratic, extremists and terrorist forces destroying public and private property,” the government’s information department said. “Do not fall prey to divisive forces aiming to destabilise Sri Lanka.”
The key Muslim coalition partner in President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), urged him to “take proactive action to stop this spread of religious attacks and intolerance”.
The SLMC said they were treating Thursday’s violence as a “sequel to the ongoing attacks and hate campaigns” against Muslims and other religious minorities in the country.
The authorities have not declared a motive for the attack that injured at least three people, but official sources said Sinhala-Buddhist hardliners were responsible. However, the recently formed Buddhist nationalist group, the monk-led Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), denied involvement and urged authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“We condemn this attack in the strongest terms,” BBS spokesman Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara told reporters in Colombo.
AFP
