Hardline Sri Lanka monks mobbed us: Dutch aid group

Hardline Sri Lanka monks mobbed us: Dutch aid group

12 Jan 2007 11:35:14 GMT

Source: Reuters

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Background

Sri Lanka conflict

More (Updates with fresh Buddhist monk protest)

By Simon Gardner

COLOMBO, Jan 12 (Reuters) - A Dutch Christian aid group that Sri Lanka suspects of helping the Tamil Tigers said on Friday hardline Buddhist monks allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse had mobbed their office and warned them to leave the island.

Monks in saffron robes identifying themselves as members of Jathika Hela Urumaya, the Sinhalese nationalist all-Buddhist monk party (JHU), stormed ZOA Refugee Care's office in a residential quarter of Colombo with dozens of supporters on Thursday, the group said.

"Around 8-10 Buddhist monks from JHU with 70-80 supporters walked into our premises," said ZOA's general affairs manager, Anslem Mudiatta. "They pushed their way through. They took our attendance registers and some keys and photographed everybody."

"They were saying: You are helping the Tigers, you are Christian, you have come to spread Christianity. This is a Buddhist country, you must get out within 24 hours," he added, but said staff were not manhandled.

Buddhist monk and JHU central committee member Missaka Kamalasiri, who took part in the protest, said aid groups suspected of helping the rebels should be expelled.

"These organisations are not suitable to work in the north and east because their activities are suspicious," he said during another protest on Friday outside the Colombo office of Save the Children, two of whose donated fishing boats were found in a captured Tiger camp.

"They say they don't know how their materials end up with the Tigers, and that is not good enough," he added. "Here is proof they are helping them."

Sri Lankan defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said on Thursday the government was investigating a number of foreign and local aid groups it suspected might be helping the Tigers.

He said the government might banish ZOA from the island after the military said this week it had found equipment belonging to the Netherlands-based group at a rebel base it had overrun in the eastern district of Ampara.

ZOA, whose projects focus on helping refugees in the restive east, deny helping the rebels. The group said that any recovered equipment with their logo must have been stolen from an office abandoned due to renewed fighting.

"It is outrageous to accuse them without providing at the same moment substantial evidence," said a European diplomat on condition of anonymity. "Rambukwella's comments are only fuelling extremist elements and makes the government responsible for hampering the much-needed work of humanitarian organisations."

"By accusing ZOA, they are directly involving the government of the Netherlands and the European Union, because they fund it -- and that is very serious."

Some aid workers fear the government is mounting a witch-hunt against aid groups to appease hardline nationalists -- namely the JHU and the Marxist party JVP -- who blame the international community for the ravages of the island's ethnic conflict. (Additional reporting by Buddhika Weerasinghe in COLOMBO)

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