Sri Lanka’s government on Tuesday formally apologised to the island’s Muslim minority for the forced cremation of Covid-19 victims, despite assurances from the World Health Organisation that burials according to Islamic customs were safe.
The government said in a statement that the Cabinet “apologised regarding the mandatory cremation policy during the Covid-19 pandemic”.
It said the new law will guarantee the right to burial or cremation to ensure that the funeral traditions of Muslims or any other community are not violated in future.
Traditionally, Muslims bury their dead facing Mecca. Sri Lanka’s majority Buddhists are usually cremated, as are Hindus.
Muslim representatives in Sri Lanka welcomed the apology but said their entire community, which makes up about 10 percent of the island’s 22 million population, was still in shock.
“We will now sue the two academics – Methika Vithanage and Channa Jayasumana – who were behind the government’s forced cremation policy,” Sri Lanka Muslim Council spokesman Hilmy Ahmed told AFP.
“We will also seek compensation.”
Ahmed said a young Muslim couple suffered unimaginable pain when the state cremated their 40-day-old baby against their wishes.
Then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had banned the burial despite facing international condemnation at the UN Human Rights Council and other forums for violating Muslim funeral norms.
In a book published earlier this month, he defended his move, saying he was only following the “expert advice” of natural resources professor Vithanage not to bury Covid victims.
He has no medical background.
Rajapaksa had put a halt to his forced cremation policy following an appeal by then Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan during his visit to Sri Lanka in February 2021.
The government then allowed the body to be buried under strict military surveillance in the remote Oddamavadi area in the east of the island – but without the participation of the grieving family.
Two years ago, Rajapaksa was forced from office after months of protests sparked by an unprecedented economic crisis that led to shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
