Following monk-led attacks at a UN safe house sheltering Rohingya refugees near Colombo, police have moved them to a maximum-security prison, where Sri Lanka has detained many of its terrorism suspects.
“It is for the refugees’ safety,” police spokesman Ruwan Gunaekara told The Hindu on Wednesday, even as activists voiced concerns about the government’s decision to detain them in the prison camp, located near the southern town of Galle.
“Refugees cannot be kept in remand prison, the centre is not appropriate to accommodate them,” a refugee lawyer in Colombo said, requesting anonymity.
Sri Lanka currently has 31 Rohingya refugees under the care of the UNHCR.
Tuesday’s attack in Mount Lavinia, a suburb located 10 km south of Colombo, has brought back into sharp focus the anti-Muslim sentiments held among hard-line Buddhist groups.
The mob, led by Saffron-robed Buddhist monks, smashed the gates of the UN safe house and entered its premises. One of the monks who stormed the building, posted a video on social media, in which he said: “These are Rohingya terrorists who killed Buddhist monks in Myanmar.”
Following the incident, the UN refugee agency said it was “alarmed and concerned” by the attack at the refugee shelter, which housed mostly women and children. Emphasising that refugees were victims of violence and persecution, who needed international protection and assistance, it urged the public to show empathy.
Finance Minister Minister Mangala Samaraweera has condemned the attack against Rohingya refugees, calling it a “shameful act by a group of thugs in robes”.
This was not the first time that Sri Lanka gave temporary shelter to Rohingya refugees, he said, pointing to earlier instances of accommodating them in 2008 and 2013. They were later resettled in the U.S. and Canada.
According to the refugee lawyer, the religious identification of Rohingya people as Muslims is recent. “They are an ethnic group, really. It goes with the prevalent anti-Muslim sentiment, which in turn plays into seeing them as a security threat,” he said.
Last week, amid protests by Buddhist monks urging Sri Lanka not to accept Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims as refugees, the government said it would not keep the asylum-seekers for long.
Hard-liners from the influential Buddhist clergy in both Sri Lanka and Myanmar have vowed to protect their religion by working together.
