Source: BBC<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency after several attacks against mosques and All Posts<\/a>Muslim-owned businesses.<\/p>\n A curfew is in place in the central district of Kandy, where crowds from the Buddhist Sinhala majority attacked a mosque, Muslim-owned shops and homes.<\/p>\n The authorities fear retaliation after a young Muslim man’s body was found in a burnt-out building on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Tensions flared after the death of a Buddhist man who was said to have been beaten by some Muslims a week ago.<\/p>\n Last week, the eastern town of Ampara also saw anti-Muslim violence over a dispute in a shop.<\/p>\n A police curfew was declared in Kandy on Monday to prevent more sectarian clashes after the attacks carried out by a large Sinhala mob. It was briefly lifted on Tuesday, but soon re-imposed after the body of a 24-year-old Muslim man was found in the town of Digana.<\/p>\n “Four mosques, 37 houses, 46 shops and 35 vehicles damaged in Digana and Teldeniya area due to the mob attack,” a local official told the BBC.<\/p>\n “Everything is destroyed. Muslims live in fear,” he said.<\/p>\n Tension has been on the rise in Sri Lanka since 2012, said to have been fuelled by hardline Buddhists.<\/p>\n Under the state of emergency, the authorities are able to arrest and detain suspects for long periods, and deploy forces where needed.<\/p>\n They will also take action against “hate speech posts” on social media, a cabinet spokesman told the BBC.<\/p>\n It is the first time in seven years Sri Lanka has imposed the measure. The country was under a state of emergency for nearly three decades when the government fought Tamil rebels in the civil war that ended in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: BBC Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency after several attacks against mosques and All PostsMuslim-owned businesses. A curfew is in place in the central district of Kandy, where crowds from the Buddhist Sinhala majority attacked a mosque, Muslim-owned shops and homes. The authorities fear retaliation after a young Muslim man’s body was found in a burnt-out building… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1521,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/1521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}