Last week, judicial history was made when the Homagama Magistrate found a high profile Buddhist monk, long associated in the public eye with inter-ethnic social tensions, guilty of criminal threats and intimidation. The monk, the Venerable Galagoda-Aththé Gnanasara Thera, General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena, was found guilty of criminal acts of intimidation and harassment against a person while in the premises of the Magistrate’s Court.
What makes this crime of intimidation a truly tragic one is that the person subject to the intimidation was someone attending courts in her personal struggle to trace her long missing journalist husband. Sandhya Ekneligoda, wife of journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda was attending the Homagama courts as a witness in the case involving the disappearance of her husband when she was subject to this intimidating and threatening harassment by the Venerable Gnanasara.
The misbehaviour of the Thera, perhaps the most outspoken Buddhist cleric in the country on issues of ethnic relations, was so blatant in the court premises that he was first charged by the police for the crime of intimidating a witness. Subsequently, however, the Attorney General filed criminal action under Sections 346 and 486 of the Penal Code.
The Ven. Gnanasara has now been found guilty of crimes under these two laws. For Sandhaya Ekneligoda, still committed to her struggle for justice for her missing husband, believed to be the victim of political repression, this is a minor victory in her long, agonized search for her loved one. Prageeth Ekneligoda, a Sinhala language journalist and satirical cartoonist, was abducted on January 24, 2010, and to date, his spouse has been working to maintain her family while continuing her endeavours to trace her loved one.
Her brave persistence – amid a continuously intimidatory atmosphere and public criticism by the politicians in power at the time – has won Sandhya Ekneligoda international prominence. Last year, she was one of thirteen women from across the world who received awards for her courageous endeavour from the United States Government, presented by US First Lady Melania Trump.
It was this brave lady who was thus criminally harassed and threatened by none other than a Buddhist monk. That this monk had the temerity to indulge in this violent behaviour in the premises of a court of justice was, at the time of the incident in Homagama, not surprising for the many people who had already noted the behaviour of the leader of the Bodu Bala Sena over several years. By the time of the incident of criminal intimidation of Mrs. Ekneligoda, the Venerable monk and his followers had been publicly seen many times preaching suspicion and fear between communities and marching in protests that specifically targeted an ethnic minority community.
So blatant has been the provocative behaviour of this Venerable monk and his followers over recent years that the Sri Lankan public has tended to associate the BBS and its clerical leadership with incidents of severe communal violence and, campaigns drastically disrupting the religious practices (such as halal) of a particularly targeted ethno-religious minority. So prominent has the Ven. Gnanasara’s anti-minority activism been that Sri Lankan Buddhism suffered worldwide disrepute for religious fanaticism and motivated violence.
For years, with such proliferation of ethnic suspicion and social violence, the chief actors in organizations whose activities were linked to these violent incidents, have been accused of inciting such violence and ethnic enmity. But the machinery of law and order has so far failed to directly bring any evidence against perpetrators, especially, those playing leadership roles in such agitation that has helped sustain a national atmosphere of inter-ethnic suspicion and fear.
Worse, during the past Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, senior government officials were known to have directly supported and encouraged organizations like the BBS despite their seeming links with numerous incidents of ethnic violence and their overt propaganda targeting particular ethnic minorities.
Exploiting the sensation that is created with provocative ethnic propaganda, the Venerable Gnanasara gave prominence to forms of social behaviour never before associated with the Dhamma. The media could not but prominently report such provocative behaviour. Thanks to such media prominence, images of the Saffron Robe amid the fires of burning homes and shops, and the angry tones of speeches by Saffron Robed clerics, spread across the globe.
These years of such agitation and campaigning by a very small segment of the Sangha and the failure of both the Sangha hierarchy as well as the security authorities to discipline that segment has served to create the impression of impunity for Saffron Robed clerics indulging in divisive and disruptive agitation.
In this light, last week’s ruling of ‘guilty’ by the Homagama Magistrate is the first successful prosecution of someone who has been at the centre of some of these violent events and ethnic tensions. While the greater crimes related to these incidents have yet to be solved, this judicial action has demonstrated that no religion or religious person is above the law.
It is to be hoped that both the Sasana authorities as well as the secular authorities administering to the Sangha will follow up on this conviction with their own disciplinary actions. Whatever the final sentencing by the Magistrate, the Homagama judgement is but the first step on the road towards a genuine enforcement of the Vinaya. The Dhamma Dveepa must show the whole world the true path to Peace and Liberation.