COLOMBO: On Thursday, a politically powerful, outspoken Buddhist monk was imprisoned for the second time by a Sri Lankan court for defaming Islam and inciting religious hate in the island nation.
Galagodaatte Gnanasara received a nine-month imprisonment on Thursday for his anti-Muslim statements from 2016.
He was already imprisoned last year on a similar accusation of demeaning the Muslim minority in Sri Lanka, which makes up just over 10% of the country’s 22 million inhabitants.
When he appealed that four-year sentence, he was out on bond.
The monk is close to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who appointed him to lead a committee in 2021 to restructure Sri Lanka’s legal system to promote religious unity.
Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, an opposition legislator at the time