SRI LANKA: Sri Lanka’s Cabinet has approved a proposal to prohibit all forms of face veils in public places due to national security concerns.
Cabinet spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella in the weekly media conference said the Cabinet has cleared the proposal and it will now go to the legal draftsmen and then be brought to parliament.
The proposal to ban the burqa was announced in March by Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekara, weeks before the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on Sri Lanka.
Although, the government then clarified that it was only a proposal and there was no move to implement it in a hurry – a position that was widely interpreted as Colombo’s attempt to garner the support of Muslim countries that had a vote at the Council.
The proposed ban on face veils, seen as targeting the burqa worn by Muslim women, had triggered concern at national and international levels.
Earlier, Minister for public security Sarath Weerasekera told a news conference he had signed a paper for cabinet approval to ban the full-face covering worn by some Muslim women on “national security” grounds.
He said, “In our early day’s Muslim women and girls never wore the burqa. “It is a sign of religious extremism that came about recently. We are definitely going to ban it,” Weerasekera added.
The wearing of the burqa in the majority-Buddhist nation was temporarily banned in 2019 after the bombing of churches and hotels that killed more than 250.
Later that year, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president after promising a crackdown on extremism. He is accused of widespread rights abuses during the decades-long insurgency in the north of the country.
Weerasekera said the government plans to ban more than a thousand madrassa Islamic schools that he said were flouting national education policy. “Nobody can open a school and teach whatever you want to the children,” he said.
The government’s moves on burqas and schools follow an order last year mandating the cremation of COVID-19 victims – against the wishes of Muslims, who bury their dead. This ban was lifted earlier this year after criticism from the United States and international rights groups.
Following the Easter Sunday terror attacks in 2019, that killed nearly 280 people in coordinated serial blasts, Sri Lanka used emergency regulations to temporarily ban the burqa.
