{"id":39692,"date":"2024-03-28T14:06:19","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T14:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intv.pk\/?p=39692"},"modified":"2024-03-28T14:06:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T14:06:19","slug":"sri-lanka-jails-firebrand-buddhist-monk-for-muslim-insults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/?p=39692","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka jails firebrand Buddhist monk for Muslim insults"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"K2FeedImage\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/intv.pk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/abf3ba9167ec8139ec2a0cd859387a5a_M.jpg\" alt=\"Sri Lanka jails firebrand Buddhist monk for Muslim insults\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"K2FeedIntroText\">A Sri Lankan court on Thursday sentenced an influential Buddhist monk to four years&rsquo; hard labour for fanning sectarian hatred against the island&rsquo;s minority Muslim population.<\/div>\n<div class=\"K2FeedFullText\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Colombo High Court found Galagodaatte Gnanasara had hurt Muslims by making disparaging remarks about Islam at a 2016 press conference.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&ldquo;The monk was sentenced to four years of hard labour and fined 100,000 rupees ($330),&rdquo; a court official said. &ldquo;He was sent to prison to start serving his sentence.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gnanasara has been accused of instigating violence against Muslims in the Buddhist-majority country, where roughly 10 percent of the 22 million people follow Islam.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He has close ties with Wirathu, an extremist monk based in Myanmar.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is not the first time that Gnanasara, who once enjoyed powerful political ties, has been in jail.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In 2018, he was sentenced to six years for intimidating the wife of a missing cartoonist and contempt of court but was freed nine months later after former president Maithripala Sirisena pardoned him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ex-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa later made Gnanasara the head of a panel to recommend legal reforms to ensure religious harmony.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At the time, opposition lawmaker Shanakiyan Rasamanickam described Gnanasara&rsquo;s committee as &ldquo;the definition of irony&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Sri Lankan court on Thursday sentenced an influential Buddhist monk to four years&rsquo; hard labour for fanning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category----3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intv.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}