{"id":91150,"date":"2019-07-07T22:27:49","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T04:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=91150"},"modified":"2019-07-07T15:25:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T22:25:15","slug":"religion-non-religion-and-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/07\/07\/religion-non-religion-and-human-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion, non-religion, and human rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mario Perera, Kadawata<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

I\ndo not know whether Mangala Samaraweera is the adherent\nof a religion. I only know, from a photo published in the newspapers some time\nback, that he has no respect for the Lord Buddha. The photo showed him holding\na Buddha statue by the neck and behind his person. I remember the strong\ncriticisms levelled against him for that act, which if done by a Catholic with\nregard to a statue of Jesus,\nwould have been considered as being sacrilegious. But Mangala S. as do other\nhigh ranking politicians, visits the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, pays his\nrespects and obeisance, and then visits the Mahanayakes for the same purpose. In\nSinhala you call all this \u2018AS BANTHUNG\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nSamaraweera\u2019s problems with Buddhism are of a wider scale. Recently even when\nHindu and Muslim political leaders openly stated that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala\nBuddhist country, Samaraweera publicly declared it was NOT. Also a venerable\nmonk recently pronounced Samaraweera to be a persona non grata in Buddhist\ntemples. It was also said that Samaraweera\u2019s name should not be displayed in\nthe precincts of Buddhist Temples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since\nrecently Samaraweera has been going hammer and tong against the Cardinal\nArchbishop. The latter was accused by Samaraweera of fanning religious\nconflicts. Now the Cardinal has been taken to task for his stand against the\nimposition of the \u2018human rights\u2019 ideology on Sri Lanka. Samaraweera\u2019s view has\nbeen seconded by a lawyer who calls himself a Catholic. What the Cardinal said\nwas that Sri Lanka with its religious background had nothing to learn from the\nWest about human rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delving\ninto what the Cardinal said, religions are rooted in the human conscience, while\nconcepts such as \u2018human rights\u2019 are mainly, even purely political weapons.\nIndeed when one reflects on all the ongoing military conflicts in the world,\nand the crimes against humanity that are being perpetrated, all ten fingers\ncould only point at those ardent promoters and defenders of HUMAN RIGHTS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nbrings .us to the pivotal issue. Since when did this \u2018human rights\u2019 concept\nemerge and take root in the Western consciousness? That happened at a time the\nworld was divided by the Western capitalist powers into two blocks: FREE and\nCOMMUNIST. The West posed as defenders of PRO-HUMAN values while the communist\nblock, literally the iron curtain countries were branded as anti-human. At that\ntime the West prided itself and put on show its open arm policy about welcoming\ninto its fold all who fled from the communist block.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nnow the iron curtain has fallen. It will be remembered that the architect of\nthat fall was no other than Pope John-Paul 11. It was the anti-communist\nrevolution in Poland inspired and promoted by the Pope that brought about the\ndomino effect on other iron curtain countries. Ever since the iron curtain\nceased to be and since the two block division of the world has been done away\nwith the emergence of new powers, the human rights issue has lost its universal\nimpact and is seen as a partisan Western weapon to promote its political\ndominance, in spite of the erosion of its moral foundation. It is now nothing\nmore than the cloth bandage over the eyes of nations ready to say \u2018EHEY\nSWAMINI\u2019 to them, the qualification for receiving loans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where\ndo Sri Lankan non-adepts of religions stand in this matter? How were their\nconsciences formed? Was it by Western human rights activism or by the religious\nfoundations on which this country stands? The answer is so obvious that only a\nWest dependent brain and loan money ambitions of Samaraweera and his ilk would fail\nto see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\niron curtain fell a long time ago. They are now being replaced or intended to\nbe replaced by concrete walls by the foremost proponent of HUMAN RIGHTS.\nFinally there is only one difference between the communist iron curtain, and\nthe American concrete curtain. The former was set in place to keep the hungry,\nthe starving, the sick, and the impoverished within the wall. The latter\ncurtain has as its objective to keep all such people whose plight is largely\ndue to American hegemony politics, outside the wall. \u2018Human rights\u2019 politics\nhave lost every conceivable moral purpose for its being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mario\nPerera,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kadawata<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mario Perera, Kadawata I do not know whether Mangala Samaraweera is the adherent of a religion. I only know, from a photo published in the newspapers some time back, that he has no respect for the Lord Buddha. The photo showed him holding a Buddha statue by the neck and behind his person. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mario-perera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91150","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=91150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}