Pro-Christian Sri Lanka Media gives publicity to stop elephant perahera but shuns publicity for 1st Asian Buddhist Animal Rights Conference
Posted on September 26th, 2016
Shenali D Waduge
To the many who say that the Sinhala Buddhists are exaggerating about the bias of Sri Lanka’s media, with just one example we can highlight that bias. While all of the English media takes pains to provide all types of publicity to promote the belief that the elephants should be removed from the perahera citing a handful of examples of torture, when the media is well aware that the 1st Asian Buddhist Animal Rights Conference is to be held in South Korea on 30th September 2016 none of the news media have chosen to even give a line of publicity to it. Moreover it is surprising that so called animal activists who jump up and down demanding the end to perahera elephants are totally unconcerned about the Asian Buddhist Animal Rights conference and stranger is that they all silent on animal/ritual sacrifice!
From NGO funded petitions, facebook pages, authors paid to write on it, plenty of effort went into project the plight of elephants citing one or two examples with the main objective being to remove the culturally significant Buddhist perahera elephant thus dealing an historical blow to a pageant that has taken place for centuries.
Here are some of the links to efforts taken
Facebook page – Say No to Cruelty to our Elephants of Sri Lanka
Dailymirror – http://www.dailymirror.lk/29644/perahera-elephant-goes-on-rampage
The baffling question is if organizations and activists are concerned about animals why are they silent on animal slaughter, ritual slaughter and other types of killing which is far more inhumane? Why have these organizations most of which are Western funded not fighting for the animal rights bill? Why is it only the Buddhists and Hindu religious leaders advocating this? Why are these individuals only concerned about and taking great pains to target the removal of the perahera elephant. Luckily people have been alert and were able to put two and two together so that campaign has now gone into silent mode but likely to soon rise again.
Nevertheless, what is unbelieveable is that when a conference in the form of the first Asian Buddhist Animal Rights is convening no one wants to give publicity to it. None of the papers have even mentioned it. Why is that? Simply because it is such a noble effort by Asian Buddhists and that is why they refrain from reporting it.
It is unfortunate that the media claiming to be unbiased and transparent take such a shallow route purposely ignoring and refusing to highlight a noble endeavor in a world where so much of cruelty is taking place.
We are not exaggerating when we say that the media’s bias and lack of straightforwardness throughout the terror was responsible for not putting the truth about the LTTE and those that silently supported LTTE into the open. The media remains silent on the very people now coming into the open who were silently LTTE sympathizers.
The 1st Asian Buddhist Conference will be held in Seoul Korea on 30th September 2016 and is co-sponsored by Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth and Dharma Voices for Animals which also has chapters in Colombo and Kandy. Please look at their websites for more information and their noble efforts.
http://dharmavoicesforanimals.org/
The media it appears enjoys highlighting all the bad it can find or implant about Buddhists and Buddhism and does not wish to promote any of the good morals that are being promoting globally.
Shenali D Waduge
September 27th, 2016 at 2:20 am
Agreed totally that temple elephants should have total freedom to be just that, temple elephants. Elephants in temples are treated extremely humanely. These US, EU,UK, Norway, Sweden, Canada (actually those who support separatism terrorism of the LTTE variety) funded NGOs (i.e. dollar funded NGOs) should focus on the over 2 million stray dogs and cats who are suffering in Sri Lanka. Also they can, if they remotely care about elephants, ensure that all electric fences between villagers and nature reserves are functioning properly and are intact. They can demand that any villagers harming any wild elephant be jailed etc. Theyy can also demand that the UNP Government expand nature reserve system in the country. However their agenda is to undermine Sinhala Buddhists and pave the way to for TNA to demand a separate state or Eelam. that is their plan.
On the other hand, Sri Lanka Buddhists should also think about their own actions which are unethical and not Buddhist in any way. There is another article on this website where a Sri Lankan talks about cooking fish and also chicken. As Sri Lankans and as a Buddhist should Sri Lankan Buddhists eat fish or chicken? In Buddhism the most important precept is ‘compassion towards all living beings’ and also treating all living beings as equals. So which Buddhist will promote cooking recipes for fish and chicken? This person should be ashamed. Actually Buddhists in Sri Lanka are really not practicing the precepts of Buddhism if they keep consuming fish, prawns, crabs, sprats, chicken etc. A real Buddhist not only will refrain from eating fish, chicken, prawns, crabs, sprats etc. but also Sri Lanka as a country should refrain from animal testing in laboratories, from practising industrial farming where chicken for example are confined to cages or large warehouses and not being able to run around freely in the fields (gam kukulo), from manufacturing and using leather products, from manufacturing and using fur products, stop industrial farming and only practice organic farming where farm animals are able to run around, take care of all stray dogs and cats in shelters, expand the shrinking nature reserve system, declare large areas of our EEZ as marine nature reserves etc. However all so called Buddhist countries sadly are not doing any of these things. All living beings should be treated equally according to Buddhism, Jainism etc,