Sri Lanka It's Happening

January 27, 2005

The tsunami relief campaign is going forward at a snails pace in some areas. In other areas, nothing has happened so far. The vast state machinery has not moved one inch to help the effected. In the middle of this mess the last thing we need is a red herring to distract the people's attention from the government's bungling and stupidity.

So what is the red herring? it is a bunch of dim witted volunteers from evangelical churches from the US and Europe trying to convert people to their faith. The relations between the cristians and the buddhists have been a bit strained because of the actions of fundamentalist buddhist monks.

Many a buddhist monk, though continuing to wear their yellow robes does not walk the path that Lord Buddha preached. To divert the public attention from their own vices and short coming, they have carried out a vicious campaign against christian churches.

Not all monks engage in this activity or support it, a true buddhist monk simply cannot act that way but these people are not true buddhist monks. They took on the yellow robes because of all the benefits of being associated with buddhist temples. To put it rather crudely buddhist temples are cash cows, the funds are rarely used for the benefit of the temple's devotees but for the benfit of the monks some of them even have fleets of luxury cars.

Now the disgusting and pathetic attempt by the evangelical churches to fish in troubled waters is sure to add fuel to the fire. The Sri Lankans are a gullible lot and would blindly believe the vitriole that will be dished out by fundamentalist buddhist monks - monks who are supposed to preach tolerance.

The end result is that people will overlook the main issue - that of the lack of effort or the blantant misuse of relief funds that is occuring. It would be no suprise if the powers that be went out of their way to rouse up these ayatollahs in yellow robes. They need as many red herrings as they can find to cover up the smell of dead fish that emanates from government offices particularly form ministry offices.

Posted by raditha at January 27, 2005 11:56 AM