[Supreme court throws out case brought by families for whom cremation is against religious law]
By
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Sri Lanka’s mandatory cremation
policy for all bodies suspected to be infected with Covid-19 has been the cause
of outrage and trauma for the majority-Buddhist country’s Muslim and Christian
minorities, whose beliefs stipulate bodies should be buried. In Islam, to cremate bodies is
to condemn them to hell.
Several of the Muslims whose bodies
were cremated by the authorities had not been tested for coronavirus, or had
even tested negative. Sri Lanka has had more than 25,000 cases of Covid-19 and
124 deaths, including more than 50 Muslims who were cremated.
In May, one Muslim man found that
his mother had been wrongfully cremated. “The day my mother died at hospital,
they took her body away and then handed me a pot of her ashes. But the next day
they told me that my mother’s test was negative and it was a mistake cremating
her. Every night I wake up and think of mother’s fate. We are poor and we do
not have the means to demand justice or fight the authorities,” he said.
Eleven affected families, both
Muslim and Christian, took up a legal battle against the cremations, accusing
the government of violating their freedom of religion and fundamental rights
under the constitution. However, this week the supreme court refused to hear
the appeal and dismissed the case, dashing their final hopes of justice and a
halt to the mandatory cremations, which are still going on.
Some Muslim families have begun
disowning their dead because they do not want to be complicit in the
cremations, which they see as a sin for their loved ones. Many have also
refused to pay the fees of 48,000 rupees (£192) that are demanded by the state
to cover the costs of cremation, meaning bodies of Muslim Covid-19 victims have
begun to pile up in hospital morgues.
Among them was Mohammad Ashraff,
49, whose uncle Mohammad Jeffrey, 76, died on 26 November of coronavirus. His
body was compulsorily brought to a hospital in Colombo. “They demanded payment
for the coffin but I refused because I told them it is against our religion to
burn bodies. We have to obey the law but we would not participate, we would
make no payments, we would have no part and no complicity in this.”
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Human rights activists say the
policy is part of an ongoing attack on Sri Lanka’s Muslim community, who make
up 9% of the population, by the Sinhala Buddhist majority government, led by
the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa was elected last year on a
wave of anti-Muslim, hardline Buddhist sentiment, following the Easter
suicide bombings by Islamist militants in churches and luxury hotels
last April which left 267 dead.
Shreen Saroor, a human rights
activist, said: “The way they are treating the Muslim community during this
pandemic is clear-cut racism. The community is being forced to abandon their
own dead in order to protect their beliefs and traditions. There is not even a
scientific justification for them being denied dignity in death.”
Sri Lanka is the only country aside
from China which has mandated cremations for suspected coronavirus fatalities,
with the government justifying it on the basis of concerns of the virus
contaminating groundwater, and that Covid-19 victims’ bodies could be used as
“biological weapons … by certain groups”.
However, the World Health
Organization issued guidelines stating that the burial of victims posed no
danger to public health, and the United Nations resident coordinator for Sri
Lanka and UN regional groups have all written to the Sri Lanka government
calling for the Covid-19 dead to be handled with dignity and their religious
beliefs respected.
This week, a statement condemning
the lack of justice for those affected by the forced cremations was signed by
24 human rights and advocacy groups. “These measures affect more than one
religious group, but it is particularly terrifying Muslims for whom the burial
of dead is a non-negotiable religious practice. They feel targeted, bullied and
threatened by the manner in which the government is acting on this,” said the
statement.
