United Nations Special Rapporteur On Minority Issues: Statement On Sri Lanka

By Asoka Bandarage –October 27, 2016

Dr. Asoka Bandarage

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Rita Izsak-Ndiaye released a Statement on Sri Lanka on October 20, 2016 following a ten day visit to the island. Representing the position of the ‘international community’, her Statement identifies ‘Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian leadership’ as the main reason behind minority grievances and Sri Lanka’s ‘long civil war’. The Rapporteur expresses fears that keeping Article 9 of the Sri Lankan Constitution which refers to the primacy of Buddhism, ‘could lead to further suppression of and discrimination against minority religions and communities’.

The mandate of the U.N. Rapporteur on Minority Issues is to ‘promote and protect the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities’, is a laudable one. This mandate, however, does not grant the Rapporteur freedom to curtail the rights of those belonging to majority communities using conceptually and factually flawed approaches. The Rapporteur is deemed an ‘independent expert’ by the United Nations. Unfortunately, her recent Statement on Sri Lanka which is built on a narrow majority vs. minority concept and a lack of understanding of historical, regional and international contexts, exhibits neither independence nor expertise.

Majority Aggressor vs. Minority Victims

Like the dominant international perspective on Sri Lanka, the Rapporteur’s Statement is based on a simplistic dualism: Sinhala Buddhist majority aggressor vs. Tamil, Muslim, Christian and other minority victims. This monolithic characterization ignores basic incongruent realities. For instance, although Article 9 the Sri Lankan Constitution gives ‘foremost place’ to Buddhism (the religion of 70% of the island’s population) and refers to the duty of the state to protect and foster Buddhism, Article 10 asserts that “Every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice”.

Rita Izsák-Ndiaye

Unlike most other pluralistic countries in the world, Sri Lanka has Cabinet level Ministries each to protect and foster Hindu, Islamic and Christian Affairs in addition to Buddhism. The critics of Article 9, including the U.N. Rapporteur, fail to acknowledge that Article 9 has not prevented Sri Lanka from allowing widespread Christian evangelical and Islamic Wahabi proselytization and conversion which are not permitted in Islamic and many other nations. In contrast, international attempts to sever the historical link between Buddhism and the Sri Lankan state, is sowing seeds of disharmony, aggravating tensions, resistance and inter-religious conflict.

While the U.N. Rapporteur enumerates extensive mechanisms to be put in place to promote and protect minorities, she does not acknowledge minority dominance in the Sri Lankan economy and the influential and strategic Cabinet Ministerships, in Investment Promotion, Urban Development, Disaster Management, Industry and Commerce, Tourism, etc. held by persons from minority communities, especially the Muslims. She also fails to recognize the powerful government positions recently acquired by members of the Tamil community and the ethical and legal controversies surrounding some of those appointments. In a seeming return to the ‘dominant minority’ position they enjoyed during the British colonial period, Tamil elites have been appointed as the Chief Justice and the Governor of the Central Bank. A Tamil politician was appointed as the Leader of the Parliamentary Opposition even though his Tamil National Alliance party won only 16 seats as opposed to the much larger number of seats gained by the United People’s Freedom Alliance of the Sinhalese.

Read More