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17-03-2021
COLOMBO: After criticism from allied states regarding Sri Lanka’s decision to impose a ban on Muslim women covering their full faces in public, the country on Tuesday said that it was “merely a proposal….under discussion.”
Sri Lanka’s minister for public security, Sarath Weerasekera, had said on Saturday it would “definitely” ban the full-face covering worn by some Muslim women on national security grounds, pending cabinet approval.
“The government will initiate a broader dialogue with all parties concerned and sufficient time will be taken for necessary consultations to be held and for consensus to be reached,” it said in a statement.
Muslims make up around a tenth of the population in majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka.
The statement follows criticism from Pakistan’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, Saad Kattak, who said in a tweet on Monday a ban “will only serve as injury to the feelings of ordinary Sri Lankan Muslims and Muslims across the globe”.
Ahmed Shaheed, a Maldivian diplomat currently serving as the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, said a ban was incompatible with international laws that protect religious belief and freedom of expression.
Several Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, are among the 47 nations that will vote on Sri Lanka’s human rights record at a United Nations session in Geneva next week.
A UN resolution passed against Sri Lanka could allow for prosecutions of government and military officials involved in ending a decades-long civil war in 2009, and Colombo is sensitive to anything that may impact voting there, according to a person familiar with the developments.
Almost a third of the 47 nations are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which last year criticized a Sri Lankan policy to forcibly cremate coronavirus victims in the country, in violation of the Islamic tradition of burial.
The policy was repealed last month. (Int’l News Desk)
