Spotlight on apologies and accountability Tears, heartbreaks surface as an island reviews Govt s C VID cremation policy - News Features dailymirror.lk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailymirror.lk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Colombo, Sri Lanka/Male, Maldives – A United Nations human rights expert has denounced Maldives’s announcement it was considering burials for Sri Lankan Muslims who die of COVID-19, saying such a move “could end up enabling the further marginalisation of Muslim communities in Sri Lanka”.
Wednesday’s statement from Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of belief, comes amid intensifying criticism of a government rule in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka that mandated anyone who dies of COVID-19 must be cremated – a practice forbidden in Islam.
Muslims in Sri Lanka have criticised the policy by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government as “discriminatory” and have insisted that burials should take place in their country.