Controversial missionary activities by fundamentalist Christian sects in Sri Lanka have inflamed passions among the predominantly Buddhist population to an extent that could rebound against older, established Christian groups such as the Catholics.
New evangelicals, often flush with American funding and eager to spread the fundamentalist gospel in the island, have been targeting the poorer sections of Sri Lankan society. Jehovah's Witnesses, the Assembly of God, Southern Baptists and several others sects have established churches in remote rural areas that have remained Buddhist through the centuries. They distribute food, clothes and other basic essentials and even cash to the deprived people, encouraging them to attend prayer sessions.
This has antagonized Buddhists, who have launched attacks on some of these churches and preachers. Many have called for a law prohibiting "unethical" religious conversion and demanded that evangelists set up shop in predominantly Christian, rather than Buddhist, areas.
The zeal of the fundamentalists has also affected Sri Lanka's established churches, especially the Roman Catholic community, the largest and oldest Christian church, introduced by Portuguese colonizers in 1505.
Matters came to a head last August when Sri Lanka's Supreme Court ruled in a landmark judgement that the constitution's guarantee of freedom of worship did not extend to the right to propagate religion.
The judgment also noted the constitution's acknowledgement of Buddhism as the country's foremost religion and the state's duty to protect and foster it.
The court was responding to a petition by Buddhists against the legal incorporation of a Roman Catholic order of missionary nuns seeking to carry out teaching, vocational youth training, nursing and care of the elderly, together with missionary work. It ruled that "the spread of knowledge to youth" by a Christian missionary order was inconsistent with the constitutional requirement to protect and foster Buddhism, the religion of 69 percent of the population.
Hindus (15 percent) are the next biggest group, followed by Christians (8 percent), Muslims (7 percent) and others (1 percent).
The Supreme Court also held that Christian institutions should not couple religious instruction with charitable deeds and agreed with the petitioners that young, inexperienced and elderly people could be lured to other religions by charitable activities.
Although fundamentalist Christians number less than 1 percent of the population, their activities are highly visible among the urban middle class and are spreading increasingly to the rural poor. More than 10 attacks on new evangelist churches have been recorded this year compared with five last year.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the