Sri Lanka An influential Buddhist monk was sentenced to four years in prison for inciting sectarian hatred against the Muslim minority population by a court on Thursday.
According to the AFP news agency, the Colombo High Court ruled that the Buddhist monk Galagodte Ganansara offended Muslims by making insulting statements about Islam during a press conference in 2016.
“Rahab was sentenced to four years of hard labor and a fine of one lakh rupees ($330),” a court official said. And ‘he was sent to prison to serve out his sentence.’
Galagodte Ganansara has been accused of inciting violence against Muslims in the Buddhist-majority country, where about 10 percent of the 22 million people practice Islam.
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Galagodte has close ties with Wirathu, an extremist monk based in Myanmar.
This is not the first time that he has been sentenced to prison.
Earlier in 2018, he was sentenced to six years in prison for intimidating the wife of a missing cartoonist and for contempt of court, but was released nine months later following a pardon by former president Maithripala Sirisena.
Later, former President Gotabaya Rajapakse appointed Galagodte Ganansara to head a panel recommending legal reforms to ensure religious harmony.
At the time, opposition legislator Shanakyan Rasmanikam described the committee as ‘ironic’.
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2024-10-06 02:17:16
