More monks appointed to all-Sinhala Task Force on Archaeology in East

 05 September 2020

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed four more monks to the all-Sinhala Task Force on Archaeological Management in the East, as concerns continue over the  

He stated that the guidance of the monks would be needed due to the significance of the sites in Sinhala Buddhism. 

An official gazette from Rajapaksa claimed that “since many of the Archeological Heritages in the Eastern Province are based on the Buddhist religious background and associated with those places of worship, it has been recognized that the guidance and patronage of the Venerable Maha Sangha is still needed in the identification and management of those heritages”.

The Task Force was put together in June to “preserve the historical heritage of Sri Lanka” in the East. 

The Eastern province, however, is largely Tamil-speaking and has been claimed as part of the Tamil homeland. It has been a central area of increasing Sinhalisation and state-sponsored colonisation. This Task Force on Archaeological Management, and the Sinhala Buddhist nature of its members, marks another attempt by the Colombo to mark parts of the North-East as Sinhala Buddhist.

See the full text of the gazette here.