Sri Lanka will soon ban the burqa or face veil, a Cabinet Minister said on Saturday, as he announced the Rajapaksa administra-tion’s latest policy decision impacting the minority Muslim community.
Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekara said authorities would henceforth use the controversial Prevention of Terrorism (PTA) law — that human rights defenders have termed ‘draconian’— to deal with religious extremism, with wide-ranging powers to detain suspects for up to two years, to ‘deradicalise’ them.
At a media conference, Mr. Weerasekara said: “The burqa is something that directly affects our national security…this [dress] came into Sri Lanka only recently. It is a symbol of their religious extremism.”
Justice Bhuyan Calls for Protection of Dissent and Personal Liberty
Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has expressed concern over the growing trend of treating peaceful dissent and ordinary actions as criminal offences. Speaking at a
