Headline is misleading. He was jailed for inciting religious hatred against a minority, in a country where there have been riots and pogroms against minorities.
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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Sri Lanka rarely convicts Buddhist monks, but this marks the second time that Gnanasara, who has repeatedly been accused of hate crimes and anti-Muslim violence, has been jailed.
The sentence, handed down by the Colombo Magistrate's Court, comes after a presidential pardon he received in 2019 for a six-year sentence related to intimidation and contempt of court.
Gnanasara was arrested in December for remarks he made during a 2016 media conference, where he made several derogatory remarks against Islam.
On Thursday, the court said that all citizens, regardless of religion, are entitled to the freedom of belief under the Constitution.
[..]
He was a trusted ally of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was forced to resign and flee abroad following mass protests over the island nation's economic crisis in 2022.
During Rajapaksa's presidency, Gnanasara, who also leads a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group, was appointed head of a presidential task force on legal reforms aimed at protecting religious harmony.
After Rajapaksa's ouster, Gnanasara was jailed last year for a similar charge related to hate speech against the country's Muslim minority but was granted bail while appealing his four-year sentence.
In 2018, he was sentenced to six years for contempt of court and intimidating the wife of a political cartoonist who is widely believed to have been disappeared. However, he only served nine months of that sentence because he received a pardon by Maithripala Sirisena who was the country's president at the time.
Yeah, this is definitely much more than just "insulting" a religion.
Yes, I assume the headline is based on what he was actually convicted of, highlighting that he's a controversial figure, and the article itself provides the context. Seems unlikely he'd be convicted for the insults without the added context.
Found the article interesting since it's at least an indication that the previous cadre of corrupt goons are getting sorted out. Not sure about how clean the current Sri-Lankan government is though.
I really wish they'd reprint the comments to give context.