{"id":88770,"date":"2019-05-14T16:01:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T23:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=88770"},"modified":"2019-05-14T16:01:07","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T23:01:07","slug":"vital-policy-actions-to-avoid-racial-ethnical-and-religious-conflicts-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/14\/vital-policy-actions-to-avoid-racial-ethnical-and-religious-conflicts-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"VITAL POLICY ACTIONS TO AVOID RACIAL\/ ETHNICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS IN SRI LANKA"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

After\nthe Easter Sunday attacks in Catholic Churches and Tourist Hotels in Colombo\nand Suburban areas, it seems that various comments and policy ideas have been\npublished in media during the past several weeks. Many of publications were in\nthe English language which attracted only a few readers and listeners.  The history of racial\/ethnical and religious\nproblems in Sri Lanka goes back to centuries and the major reason for conflicts\nand differences could be considered as isolate and separate living of ethnical\nand religious groups in ghettos. In Sri Lanka people in racial\/ ethnic,\nreligious or castes reside in separate areas and they do not like to mix with\nother ethnical, religious or caste groups and this nature promotes the\ndevelopment of different cultures, traditions, beliefs, etc and it also restricts\ninformation going out about the activities of a community. In Western\ncountries, it seems that human settlement policy does not encourage creating\nghettos and promotes mixing different communities, ethnic and religious groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human\nsettlement policy or the environment in Sri Lanka promotes conflicts between\ncommunities and groups and the nature of this social system has created\ndifficulties for government authorities such as police, intelligence agents and\narmed forces to gain information about the inside of communities. In history\nduring the Dutch era districts of the country lined to encourage the further\npromotion of isolation of communities and restricting the allocation of\ngovernments lands to mixing of different communities. It appears that among\nSinhala people, creating ghettos is not a problem as they mix with each other\nand they don’t want to maintain closed societies, but others such as Muslim and\nTamils want to maintain closed societies or groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except\nfor Sinhala and Buddhist communities, all others such as Tamil, Muslim,\nCatholic, Christian communities have networked in various areas of the\ncountry.  Within the Sinhala Community,\nit could have seen that the Sinhala community was also divided by religions\nsuch as Catholic, Christian and caste dictions, however, the division of the\nSinhala community has radically changed after the political metamorphoses in\n1956. Socially, it seems that the Sinhala community has been uniting to ignore\nthe differences and the pace of changes in the Sinhala community does not\nreflect in other communities such as Tamil and Muslim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since\nthe origination of the Kandyan Kingdom, the differences of the society have\nbeen sharpened and the British imperialism in the country used such divisions\nfor the advantage of divide and rule policy. The vicious aspect of isolate\nliving is the promotion of discriminations within a community.  The personal law structure of the country\nseems to be fuelling the discrimination and major victims are women and children\nin isolated communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmajor reason to create unreasonable personal laws, which contradict with common\nlaw and ethnic conflicts is a settlement system restricting other communities\nto go in. The proposed constitutional reforms of the Yahapalana regime promoted\ndeveloping legally isolated communities. \nWhen Mr. J.R. Jayawardane was in power disagreed with the North and East\nmerger as his view was, when population rapidly increases in Western Province,\nthe lands of East should be allowed to accommodate excess population in the\nWest.  The Yahapalana regime attempted to\ngain political advantages through constitutional reforms and promote ghettos of\ncommunities or religious groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\n1970, Buddhists and Christians have mixed within Sinhala community and\nexcellent reconciliation has developed among two religions and why other\nreligious groups such as Hindus and Muslims cannot mix with Buddhists and\nChristians?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfollowing policy actions are essentially needed in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Settlement policy should\nbe changed to restrict creating ghettos of races, ethnic groups, religions,\ncastes, and many others.<\/li>
  • Personal laws of the\ncountry should be reformed disallowing the discrimination of women and\nchildren.<\/li>
  • The population of the\ncountry is rapidly increasing and the government must set policies to reduce\nthe population to 1981 level within 20 years restricting a woman have only two\nbabies.<\/li>
  • Polygamy in the Muslim\ncommunity must be banned and restrictions to mixed marriage should be removed<\/li>
  • Strict anti-discrimination\nlaws must be enforced in the country.  <\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS After the Easter Sunday attacks in Catholic Churches and Tourist Hotels in Colombo and Suburban areas, it seems that various comments and policy ideas have been published in media during the past several weeks. Many of publications were in the English language which attracted only a few readers and listeners.  The history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}