ALUTHGAMA-
At least three Muslims were killed and 75 people seriously injured in violence between Buddhists and Muslims in southern Sri Lankan coastal towns best known as tourist draws, with Muslim homes set ablaze, officials and residents said on Monday.
There has been increasing violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka since 2012, mirroring events in Myanmar, which has seen a surge of attacks by members of the majority Buddhist community against Muslims.
Clashes erupted on Sunday in Aluthgama and Beruwela, two Muslim-majority towns on the Sinhalese-dominated southern coast, during a protest march led by the hardline Buddhist group Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), or “Buddhist power force”.
“I just can’t understand a government which prevents even a trade union or student protesters going to protest marches allowing the BBS to conduct the meeting,” Rauf Hakeem, justice minister and the leader of the country’s largest Muslim party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, told Reuters.
He said, “Muslims in the area had repeatedly requested authorities to provide them with security.”
Many independent analysts say well-coordinated violence against Muslims and Christians appears to have tacit state backing as those involved in previous attacks have yet to be punished. The government denies any collusion.
The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam attacked Muslim villages in the northeast during the 1983-2009 civil war. More than 140 people were killed in a massacre of Muslims in 1990 blamed on the Tigers, which the group denied.