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Sri Lanka to outlaw religious conversions

* Passes bill to prevent conversion by force, allurement or by fraudulent measure

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has approved a controversial bill seeking to outlaw ‘unethical’ religious conversions in the Buddhist-majority island, the parliament was told Tuesday.

The court ruling clears the way for the bill to be passed into law with a simple majority vote, despite protests from minority Christian organisations.

The bill was proposed last month by the all-monk National Heritage Party, which won nine seats in the 225-member assembly in April elections. President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s minority government in June announced similar plans to restrict conversions and asked the legal draftsman’s department to prepare the legislation.

The bill proposed by the monks calls for ‘prohibition of conversion from one religion to another by use of force, allurement or by fraudulent measure.’

A spokesman for the monks’ party said the bill would outlaw ‘unethical conversions’ in which the rural poor are allegedly offered cash or other inducements to change from Buddhism or Hinduism to Christianity.

There had been a spate of attacks against Christian places of worship since December after the funeral of a popular Buddhist monk, Gangodavila Soma, who led a campaign against religious conversions.The monk’s death after he suffered a heart attack in Russia fuelled conspiracy theories despite an autopsy showing he died of natural causes.

Christians make up 7.5 percent of the population of Sri Lanka, where more than 60,000 people have died in a 30-year armed campaign by separatist Tamils, who are predominantly Hindu.

Sri Lanka’s constitution grants the foremost place to Buddhism, which is practised by nearly 70 percent of the island’s 19 million people. Hindus make up about 15 percent and Muslims about 7.5 percent. afp

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