Curbing extremism in SL: Asgiriya Mahanayakes want amnesty for intelligence officers

While stating that military intelligence officers had rendered a yeoman service to to help defeat the separatist LTTE, the Mahanayake Theras of the Asgiriya Chapter requested the government to grant an amnesty to intelligence officers in order to curb extremism in the country.

The Karaka Maha Sanga Sabha of the Asgiriya Chapter said in a statement that it was a known fact that religious extremism intensified only as a result of our intelligence service being weakened after several officials were imprisoned.

The statement said it was learnt that politicians had acted to release religious fanatics who vandalized Buddhist statues in Mawanella without even an investigation being conducted.

“It is a duty of the government to grant amnesty to intelligence officers who rendered a yeoman service to the nation,” the statement added.

It said if the Head of State wants to continue to be influenced by foreign powers disregarding the aspirations of the people and not realizing true nature of the religious crisis that has struck this country, such a leadership would be rejected by the people and the Maha Sangha would also stand with the people in such an eventuality.

“The recent terror attack was a national catastrophe faced not only by Catholics but all Sri Lankans irrespective of racial or religious differences. We believe that programmes launched to create peace and reconciliation after the war ended have been a failure. This is because most of them were carried out blaming the Sinhalese and Buddhists as being responsible for the crisis.

The present religious crisis erupted as the political leadership did not pay attention to factors which led to extremism and extremist groups who worked according to extremist ideologies. Instead of doing so, the Buddhist monks, who highlighted religious extremism and warned of the social calamity it could create, were harassed, condemned and humiliated,” the statement added.