Gnanasara Thera out on bail

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By Editor_1
Sri Lankan Buddhist monk Ven. Gnanasara Thera at a magistrates' court following an arrest warrant for his alleged hate crime against Muslims in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in June 2017 -AFP/File

COLOMBO  —  Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara  Thera, General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), who was sentenced to four years of rigorous imprisonment, was released on bail by the Court of Appeal on Thursday (18).

The Court issued the bail order when the revision petition filed by Gnanasara Thera was taken up for consideration earlier in the day.

The monk was sentenced to four years of rigorous imprisonment in March this year by Colombo High Court Judge Aditya Patabendige over defamatory comments made against Islam during a 2016 media briefing convened at the Kuragala Buddhist monastery in 2016. The monk was also ordered to pay a fine of Rs 100,000.

The Attorney General had filed the case against Gnanasara Thera on charges of causing religious and racial disharmony in Sri Lanka.

The judge found the monk guilty of the two indictments filed by the Attorney General under the Penal Code and sentenced him to two years of rigorous imprisonment for each indictment and imposed two fines of Rs 50,000 each. He also ordered that the two sentences be served separately, and the sentence be extended by two more years in the event of the monk’s failure to pay the fine.

The firebrand monk, accused of promoting Islamophobia in Sri Lanka, was allegedly at the forefront of an anti-Muslim campaign in 2012, which called on the majority Sinhalese to boycott Muslim-owned businesses.

The United States in 2014 cancelled a visa issued to the monk while social media platform Facebook blocked his account after the BBS’s alleged involvement in violence against the Muslim community in the Western coastal town of Aluthgama.

In August 2018, Gnanasara Thera was convicted of four contempt of court charges by the Court of Appeal and sentenced to 19 years of rigorous imprisonment to be completed within 6 years. The conviction and sentencing were premised on the Thera’s behaviour within the court premises, judged to have been beyond the respectful behaviour expected of ordinary citizens before the courts. He was later pardoned by then-President Maithripala Sirisnena.

Critics have said Gnanasara Thera has been used to create a rift between the Sinhala majority and Muslim minority for political reasons. But the monk has denied the allegation and has said Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority has issues that have been ignored by politicians, issues that he had tried to address.

Since the 2019 Easter bombings, the monk has maintained that his cause is not against ordinary Muslims who have coexisted with the Sinhalese for centuries but with extremist, Wahabist elements in Muslim society.

-ENCL/economynext.com

Editor_1
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