2ND LEAD (Update)

SL State-funded Buddhist vihara declared opened in Ki'linochchi campus of Jaffna University

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 March 2020, 19:52 GMT]
Occupying Colombo launched its plan to construct a grand Buddhist vihara inside the Ki'linochchi campus of Jaffna University in 2018. Following the controversial move, the administration of Jaffna University allocated lands for the construction of Christian, Saiva, Islamic and Buddhist temples. However, only the Buddhist temple was awarded large sums of money from the SL State as well as by the extremist Buddhist organisations in the South. The construction launched during the previous regime was accelerated within the last three months. On Saturday, the Buddhist temple, named Sarasavi Viharaya, was declared opened amid a grand ceremony by the Sinhala students as well as the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups from the South.



Sinhala Buddhist extremist “chief prelate” (Nayaka thero) Panamure Thilakavansa (Panāmurē Tilakavaňśa), who claims as being in command of spreading Buddhism in the North and East, made a prominent presence along with Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero of the Polgahawela-based Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery.

The Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery is experimenting with the religious conversion of Tamils through assisting poverty-stricken Tamil children. The Monastery has also translated Sinhala Buddhist books into Tamil to spread Theravada Buddhism among Tamils.

Panamure Thilakavansa, stationed at Arisimalai in Pulmoaddai has been grabbing lands from Tamil-speaking Muslims and launching Buddhist temples in the Tamil-speaking Muslim village of Pulmoaddai in Trincomalee.

Welimada Saddasila (Saddhāsīla) thero delivered a Special Dhamma sermon at the ceremony.

Community organisations such as “Buddhist Brotherhood Society of Jaffna University” were created by the Sinhala groups from South to fund the construction and the ceremony. The 65 Division of the occupying Sri Lanka Army was also promoting the construction in various ways, Tamil students in Ki'linochchi said.

The ground, where LTTE’s Thooyavan Arasa’riviyat Kalloori (Thooyavan College of Political Science) once situated, was allocated to the Engineering Faculty of the University of Jaffna after the end of the war.

The SL Ministry of Higher Education has been instructing the administration to enrol a large number of Sinhala students to the Engineering and Science faculties of Jaffna University.

The Sinhalicisation of education and the educational institutions of Tamils is viewed as cultural genocide by Eezham Tamils.

The condition of the Saiva temple within the premises photographed on the same day reveals the plight of the educational institutions in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils.

The Buddhist vihara in the premises of their campus was just another manifestation of the “foremost” place given to the Buddhism, an entrenched clause in the constitution of the occupying SL state, Tamil students in Ki'linochchi commented.



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