Sri Lanka’s mandatory cremation policy is playing politics with the dead - GTF

"Sri Lanka’s mandatory cremation policy has caused major outrage and trauma for the Muslim and Christian minorities, whose beliefs require dead bodies should be buried. It is the Muslim community that has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and to force them to adopt practices that violate their fundamental religious beliefs is cruel and inhumane," the GTF said in a statement.

It has been reported that the abuse of this policy is widespread and several Muslims whose bodies were cremated had not been tested for coronavirus, and even tested negative.

"Another tragic manifestation of this policy is that several Muslim families have even disowned their dead because they did not want to be complicit in the cremation of their bodies which is believed to be a sinful act against their loved ones," the statement pointed out.

They said that there is no scientific justification for the government to adopt this policy and deny the dead the dignity they deserve in death. In fact, the guidelines from the World Health Organization state that the burial of victims posed no danger to public health, and almost all the countries allow for the burial of COVID-19 victims, making Sri Lanka an outlier among the world nations.

"Top government officials changed their original guidelines under pressure from influential Buddhist monks to mandatory cremations. The Supreme Court rejected fundamental rights petitions filed by fourteen affected families without giving reasons for its decision. Faced with mounting domestic and international pressure, the government made an extraordinary attempt to fly bodies to Maldives for burial to placate its extremist support base. All these unquestionably indicate the direction Sri Lanka is heading," they said.

They noted that the mandatory cremation policy is not an exception, but rather one more fitting element within the broader agenda of the Rajapaksa government.

"The deplorable initiatives it has taken within a year, such as enacting the autocratic 20th Amendment to the constitution; appointing Presidential Commissions and task forces to scuttle established governance procedures; militarising top levels of the bureaucracy (including some who are credibly implicated in serious human rights violations), resorting to surveillance, intimidation and detention without charge (a precursor for rampant media self-censorship), and withdrawing from the UNHRC resolution which Sri Lanka pledged for years as its ‘solemn commitment to accountability and reconciliation’ – are indicative of its gradual transition from democratic to an authoritarian regime," the GTF warned.