131 Sinhala Buddhist installations crop up in North after 2009: NPC

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 June 2018, 18:17 GMT]
The districts of Mullaiththeevu and Vavuniyaa top the list of district-wise figures of Sinhala Buddhist installations, which the occupying Colombo has put up in the Tamil-speaking Northern Province after the end of the genocidal war on Eezham Tamils, say democratically elected councillors of the Northern Provincial Council. The list is not complete as it does not include the Buddhist temples that are located inside the Sinhala military camps, the NPC sources told TamilNet on Friday.

67 Buddhist installations have been put up in the district of Mullaiththeevu, and 35 temples have been constructed in the Vavuniyaa district.

20 installations have been put up in Mannaar district, 6 in Jaffna and 3 in Ki'linochchi district, the NPC sources further said.

Apart from 131 Buddhist installations in North after 2009, there are many places of Sinhala Buddhist worship put up by the SL military inside the military bases and High-Security Zones. It has not been possible to collect details about these installations, the sources further said.

Although the SL Constitution attempts to project all the religions as having equal status, the constitutional provision of ‘foremost place’ and various other arrangements such as the SL police having a special division to protect the Buddhism under the guidance of SL Ministry of Buddha Sasana.

If anyone attempts to peacefully dismantle even a Buddha statue forcibly erected in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, it would be interpreted as a crime.

Article 9 (Chapter II) of the current constitution of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka promulgated in 1978, states that "[t]he Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place, and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana.."

Eezham Tamils say that this Article constitutes a particular obstacle in negotiating any degree of autonomy with the genocidal State of Sri Lanka because it is an 'entrenched' section of the constitution.

An overwhelming majority of the sites of Buddhist places of worship are put up in places where no Sinhala Buddhist, except the occupying Sinhala military, live.

During the last rural elections, all the mainstream parties, including the ruling UNP and the SLFP as well as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), which is backed by former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, have been competing with each other with claims of promoting establishment of Buddhist places of worship in the North and East.

The UNP claimed in its election manifesto that its government had allocated money to erect 1,000 stupas in the North-East.

Chronology: