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“One Country, One Law”: The Sri Lankan State’s Hostility toward Muslims Grows Deeper
Sri Lanka’s president has named a veteran anti-Muslim agitator to head a legal reform task force.
Critics have called the move “incomprehensible”, but it is readily understood as a way to divert discontent among the government’s Sinhala Buddhist base toward an embattled minority.
- Alan Keenan
- ICG
On 28 October, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed the militant Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara to head a presidential task force on legal reforms, shocking many in Sri Lanka and beyond.
Gnanasara is the public face of the country’s leading anti-Muslim campaign group, Bodu Bala Sena (Army of Buddhist Power, or BBS).
He is widely…