[Sahabdeen speaks to TIME in the ransacked living room of her gutted home.
The ceiling fan lies in splinters, the sink ripped from the wall, a portrait of
her long-deceased father torn in two. She was alone at prayer when around 200
young men “armed with knives, iron bars, chains” arrived at her home just after
dusk. “I could hear them smashing, smashing, smashing,” she says, eyes welling
up and fingers clasped together in supplication. “All around were flames.”]
The anti-Muslim violence that ravaged Dharga Town
During her long career as a teacher, Nafeesathiek Thahira Sahabdeen
prided herself on treating children of all backgrounds the same. That didn’t
help her on June 15, though, when a radical Buddhist mob ransacked her home in Dharga Town Sri Lanka . The 68-year-old Muslim was left “penniless, homeless
and heartbroken,” she says. “I thought I would die. I was so afraid.”
Sahabdeen speaks to TIME in the ransacked living room of her gutted home.
The ceiling fan lies in splinters, the sink ripped from the wall, a portrait of
her long-deceased father torn in two. She was alone at prayer when around 200
young men “armed with knives, iron bars, chains” arrived at her home just after
dusk. “I could hear them smashing, smashing, smashing,” she says, eyes welling
up and fingers clasped together in supplication. “All around were flames.”
Touring her scorched neighborhood, the bevy of gutted buildings and
roofless homes indicates Sahabdeen actually fared better than many. Three
people died in the violence, all Muslims shot by police shepherding a 7,000-strong
mob, claim locals, while another two people had legs amputated after receiving
gunshot wounds. At least 80 more were injured.
What sparked this bloodletting between two communities with virtually no
historical grievances? Throughout the ashes of Dharga Town
BBS, or Bodu Bala Sena, otherwise known as Buddhist Power Force, is a
Buddhist supremacist group accused of stirring sectarian hated in Sri Lanka . Led by a monk, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara
Thero, BBS accuses Sri Lanka ’s Muslims of threatening the nation’s
Buddhist identity, and enjoys support at high levels. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the
President’s brother who also serves as Secretary of Defense, has been an
outspoken supporter of BBS in the past.
“BBS echoes the sympathies and the prejudices of the majority Buddhist
population,” says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace
Council NGO. “So the views have a certain resonance, and the media gives voice
to that, and the counter view is toned down or even censored.”
The June 15 violence was sparked by an innocuous traffic dispute between
a Muslim man and a Buddhist monk. Immediately afterward, Buddhist extremists
descended on the monk and urged him to report the matter to the authorities. When
the police declined to take action, a rally was organized. Gnanasara was there,addressing
the mob. “If a Muslim or any other foreigner puts so much as a hand on a
Sinhala person — let alone a monk — it will be the end of all of them!” he
bellowed to raucous cheers. When the mob approached Muslim-majority Dharga Town
Gnanasara denies that BBS organized the march, and blames the
“uncontrolled behavior of some of the extreme Muslim communities in the area”
for the ensuing bloodshed during a phone interview with TIME. But even before
his firebrand oration, portents of trouble were clear; on the Facebook post to
announce the gathering, one of the first comments asked: “Shall I bring a can
of gasoline?”
So why is Sri Lanka, a nation of 20 million that for three decades was
decimated by a vicious civil war between the Buddhist state and largely Hindu
Tamil minority, suddenly gripped by anti-Muslim hatred? Historically, the
island’s Muslim community had always been a staunch supporter of the Sinhala-Buddhist
political establishment, as it similarly suffered at the hands of the LTTE
rebel group, more commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, who expelled all Muslims
from northern
provinces .
“Prejudices are growing because there is a small but influential group
of extremist Buddhists who are having a relatively free run and are able to
articulate very national sentiments and highlight the insecurity of the Sinhalese,”
says Perera, himself a Sinhalese Christian.
The Sri Lankan experience is far from unique. In Burma , officially known as Myanmar , just 1,000 miles (1,600 km) across the Bay of Bengal , an extremist Buddhist movement called 969 is
waging a parallel war, using identical tactics as BBS. (Both groups rose to
prominence around 2012. Its leader is also a monk, Wirathu. When anti-Muslim
riots erupted in the central Burmese town of Meiktila in April last year, clashes that killed
dozens and displaced thousands, he arrived in the middle of the carnage, although
later claimed to have tried to halt the bloodshed. Then, during last month’s
communal riots in Mandalay, where Wirathu’s monastery is based, he fanned the
flames through an incendiary Facebook post warning of Muslims “armed to teeth
with swords and spears” preparing a jihad against local Buddhists.
Both he and Gnanasara make virtually identical xenophobic claims about
Muslims converting Buddhist women and luring them into unholy polygamous unions,
and using their corrupt business acumen to swindle hard-working Buddhists. “[Muslims]
are breeding so fast, and they are stealing our women, raping them,” Wirathu
told TIME’s Hannah Beech last year. “They would like to occupy our country, but
I won’t let them. We must keep Myanmar Buddhist.” (In fact, neither Burma nor Sri Lanka has seen a Muslim population explosion).
BBS speeches are very similar. Halal certification is apparently funding
al-Qaeda and Hamas; Islamic blood sacrifices are summoning forth “ghosts and
demons;” Muslim perverts are using burqas as disguises to carry out licentious
deeds; and, most bizarrely, the Quran requires Muslims to spit three times into
any food or beverage served to a person of another faith.
“I think they are learning from each other,” says Hilmy Ahmed, vice
president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka. “It started in Myanmar , but Gnanasara has perfected it.”
Certainly, the similarities between these nations are striking. Both Sri Lanka and Burma have large, state-backed Theravada Buddhist
majorities comprising around 70% to 80% of the population. Both nations have
Muslim communities, of around 10% of the population, that historically backed
the establishment. Both are going through the aftermath of decades-long civil
conflicts against other ethnic minorities — the Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka ; a smattering of mainly Christian rebel
groups in Burma . Now both boast extremist Buddhist movements led by rabble-rousing
saffron-clad clerics.
Gnanasara is quick to laud his Burmese counterpart, and admits the pair
met over the summer to “establish an international network of activists
stationed in Buddhist countries.”
“We are all in the same boat in terms of attacks on Buddhist communities,”
he says. “What is happening in Burma and Thailand , especially the southern part of Thailand , [resembles] what happened recently in Bangladesh .”
BBS and 969 are embarking on a partnership with similar organizations
and activists across the region to face off “international threats,” reveals
Gnanasara. “It would be better to have some sort of cohesion between us so we
can respond collectively.”
Gnanasara maintains he did not “discuss any tactics” during his meeting
with Wirathu, yet a shared modus operandi is obvious. The Burmese incidents, just
like the Aluthgama clashes and hundreds of others, were sparked by a personal
grievance between a Muslim and Buddhist — an argument between shopkeeper and
customer over gold rings in Meiktila; an allegation of rape in Mandalay that
the accuser eventually admitted was a total fabrication — that quickly spiraled
out of control. After the initial complaint, an extremist clique descends on
the town to aid the “wronged” Buddhist party. Before long there are lootings, beatings
and torched houses.
Now that existentialist threats to Sri Lanka and Burma have disappeared with the end of their
respective civil conflicts, the specter of Muslim extremism is convenient means
of justifying political control.
“It’s in this government’s narrow political interests of winning
elections to foster the divide, to foster Sinhala nationalism,” says Perera. Hilmy
agrees: “We feel that it’s likely to be government-orchestrated as the
government has lost the confidence of the minorities. The Tamils and Christians
are completely alienated.”
Sahabdeen, for one, needs no convincing. When hundreds of young men
ripped her home apart, the security services stood idly by, just a block away. Eventually,
two rioters escorted her toward these officers before returning, unhindered, to
resume their plunder. “They took me out the gate as if I was being walked to
the gallows,” she says. “The police just stood there.”
Ironically, while the reality of creeping Islamization is almost
certainly bogus, the perceived threat may be instrumental in fomenting its creation.
“Muslims don’t have any option but to live here and die here, and so I’m very
worried if Muslims are pushed beyond a certain point forces from outside could
exploit that,” says Hilmy.
If that happens, Sri Lanka and Burma could head straight back toward a fresh round
of civil conflict.
@ Time
