Four months after the harrowing Anti Muslim riots, Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prasad Kariyawasam spoke on the progress Sri Lanka has made towards inter religious harmony and the need to do more. He explained that in keeping with the prohibition of types of hate speech the government is working with social media operators to curb the spread of misinformation and hate speech. Commending Facebook’s decision, earlier this month, to remove misinformation that could promote violence from its platform, Kariyawasam welcomed this saying that “Sri Lanka, as a country that was affected, is heartened by this decision.”
The Secretary made these statements whilst representing Sri Lanka at the Conference to Advance Religious Freedom hosted by the US Secretary of State, Michael R. Pompeo from the 24th – 26th July in Washington DC. The Conference was attended by government representatives from over 80 countries, religious leaders, civil society member and non-governmental organizations. Its goal was to develop solutions to address religious persecution with a focus on blasphemy laws, the impact of terrorist groups and the use of counter terrorism as a false pretext for the suppression of religious freedom.
While commenting on the Anti Muslim riots of March 2018, Kariyawasam pointed out that action was being taken by the victim communities themselves to promote religious harmony. The Ministry in-charge of Muslim Religious Affairs has provided incentives for mosques to increase involvement in co-existence initiatives and community service. The Ministry has also started an ‘Open Mosque Project’ that opens one mosque per district for non Muslim visitors. Kariyawasam believes that these initiatives will “enhance understanding between Muslims and other communities.”
“But other communities and the government must have a larger role to play”, Kariyawasam acknowledged that Sri Lanka has not had an impressive track record of communal harmony despite its religious diversity since ancient times. But he hopefully spoke of the establishment of the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR) and the actions it has taken to “facilitate aspects of non recurrence and promote reconciliation.”
The ONUR has conducted workshops for school students of different religious and language backgrounds to come together to establish friendships and learn about peace building. “4000 students have participated meaningfully in these workshops in 2017,” said Kariyawasam pointing to the programmes effectivity.
“Nine more workshops are planned to be held between now and October.” ONUR has also helped organize celebrations of all religious festivals in over one thousand national and provincial level schools.
“In order to sustain this program a Handbook on Religious and Cultural Festivals was prepared in all three languages” said Kariyawasam. ONUR has also conducted an All Island Cartoon Competition on ‘Appreciating Ethnic and Religious Diversity’ and has introduced a compulsory first year course on ‘Agents of Positive Change’ at six universities.
Kariyawasam explained that because these initiatives had to occur at a grass roots level ONUR is working with “23 partner organizations such as the National Peace Council, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Rural Development Foundation, Environment and Community Development Centre, Human Development Centre and the National Ethnic Unity Foundation.” -MA