SRI LANKA: Buddhist Nationalism Fuels Attacks

Source: Morning Star News, March 12, 2014

A top leader of one of Sri Lanka’s most militant Buddhist extremist groups led 250 people in an assault on a Christian leader and his family last month, according to sources in the country.

Based in the capital city of Colombo on the island nation’s western coast, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, general secretary of the Buddhist extremist Bodu Bala Sena, made the 71-mile trip to Sri Lanka’s central Kandy District to lead 250 villagers and 11 Buddhist monks to the premises of a Holy Family Church leader identified only as Pastor Susantha, according to the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL).

After storming the pastor’s Asgiriya premises at about 6:30 p.m. on February 16, the villagers and 11 Buddhist monks belonging to the Bodu Bala Sena demanded that he immediately stop worship services that take place there. As Pastor Susantha was explaining to Gnanasara his right to continue worship services, the mob dragged the church leader and his wife from their home and assaulted them, sources said.

“The mob punched, slapped, and hit the pastor and his wife with their fists,” a Christian leader told Morning Star News. “The pastor and wife both suffered minor physical injuries.”

» See also Christianity in Sri Lanka: How We Can Learn from and Support the Church There (The Lausanne Movement).

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