COLOMBO – Buddhist mobs swept through Muslim neighbourhoods in Sri Lanka’scentral hills, destroying stores and restaurants and setting homes on firedespite a curfew, a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of securityforces, residents said Thursday.
In the small town of Pallekele, mobs ignored the curfew that was supposedto keep them off the streets and used gasoline bombs to burn four homes,said Mohamed Nazar.
An angry crowd gathered around Nazar’s house around 8pm Wednesday, throwingrocks and shouting, so the family turned off the lights so no one could seeinside. “Then a large flame came and the house caught fire,” Nazar said.
His father hid under a sofa as the flames took hold, but Nazar grabbed himand they ran out. Authorities eventually put out the fire, but much of hisfamily’s belongings were destroyed, he said.
Many residents of the area around Kandy, the main hill town, described aseries of similar attacks since the violence began early this week. Thestreets of most towns were all but empty except for police and soldiers.
As evening began to fall Thursday, many Muslims worried that darkness couldbring more attacks, and that the police would do little to stop them.
We can’t trust the army and police. My shop has been attacked in theirpresence and I don’t know what could happen tonight,” said Mohamed Faraz,whose butcher shop was ransacked.
The government ordered a state of emergency Tuesday and later shut downpopular social media networks, saying they were being used to spread falserumors that led to the attacks.
“Technology created to bring people together is being used to pull peopleapart,” technology minister Harin Fernando was quoted as saying by the SriLanka Mirror newspaper. “Social media websites such as Facebook, Whatsappand Viber … have been used to destroy families, lives and privateproperty.”
Some see the violence rooted in the spread of hardline Buddhism.
Sri Lanka has long faced a bitter ethnic divide between the majoritySinhalese and the minority Tamils, fuelling a decades-long civil war asTamil militants tried to carve out their own homeland. – Agencies