Photo courtesy of HRW
In Sri Lanka, where a tapestry of religions weaves through its landscape, the promise of religious harmony at times masks a reality marked by religious intolerance and unequal protections. Despite constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, recent years have seen a continuation of discrimination, intimidation and violence against religious minorities.
A new report by the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) titled From Fear to Violence: Religious Attacks in Sri Lanka offers a legal analysis of religiously motivated incidents documented between November 2023 and October 2024. The report was co-authored by lawyers Malsirini de Silva and Avishka Jayaweera and draws from the published and unpublished scholarship of legal academics, including Dr. Gehan Gunatilleke who currently serves as a commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.
The study explores two underlying drivers of conflict that have sustained violent ethnoreligious conflict in Sri Lanka: entitlement complexes and existential fears. According to the report, belief among segments of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country and that they are its original inhabitants has fostered a sense of entitlement to land, sociocultural dominance and economic dividends. A similar complex may also manifest in the case of regional or local majorities including in Tamil, Muslim and Catholic majority areas. Assertions by movements such as the Siva Senai that certain parts in the North and East are Hindu is one such example.
Connected to these entitlement complexes are deep-rooted existential fears that fuel religious tensions. Some of these fears highlighted in the report are fears among some religious communities of erosion of their status at the national or regional levels by activities of other religious and ethnic communities and fears over Muslim population growth and economic influence, Christian proselytization and Tamil claims to autonomy in the North and East. The report identified economic, political and sociocultural fault lines that produce conditions for religious tensions, which include competition over scarce resources (such as land and business opportunities) and disputes over religious attire and sacred spaces.
The report provides an in-depth legal analysis of acts, practices and policies reported between November 2023 and October 2024 that cause some form of harm to persons or groups on the basis of their religious identity and offers an opinion on whether an incident potentially infringes upon fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution or constitutes an offence under other domestic and international human rights obligations. Due to the limitation of the number of incidents detected during the period of the study, the quantitative analysis presented in the study provides only an impression of the ground situation and not necessarily an actual representation of it.
According to its findings, the most common types of incidents were discrimination based on religious identity (Article 12 of the Constitution) followed by violations of Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) (Articles 10 and 14(1)(e) of the Constitution). Most incidents involving discrimination were with regard to the discriminatory application of the requirement to register Christian places of worship. In contrast, a majority of the discriminatory incidents over appearance or attire were directed at Muslims while for Hindus the most common form of discrimination involved discriminatory treatment during arrests and threats with most occurring during religious festivals or ceremonies at contested sacred sites.
Article 10 of the constitution states that every person is entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This includes the freedom to have (and not have) or adopt (and therefore change) a religion or belief. It is an inner freedom and therefore an absolute right. On the other hand, Article 14(1)(e) protects external manifestations of religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching and this may be restricted under Article 15(7).
In the case of Karuwalagaswewa Vidanelage Swarna Manjula et al v. Pushpakumara, Officer-in-Charge, Police Station, Kekirawa et al (2018), the Supreme Court held that the constitution does not guarantee a fundamental right to propagate religion. However in a more recent judgement delivered on May 21, 2025, M. A. S. Kalyani de Silva et-al v S.J.B. Suwaris et-al, the Supreme Court, while reaffirming this position, held that it was not an offence to propagate a religion. His Lordship Justice Janak de Silva observed: “… propagation in the sense of the right to convert any person to one’s own religion or in the sense of spreading one’s religion is not an offence as the law stands now.”
The FoRB violations identified in the report include interference with religious worship, observance, teaching and the freedom to adopt a religion of one’s choice with the data revealing that Christians and Hindus were often exposed to violations involving interference with worship and Muslims were targeted mostly in incidents involving interference with observation, primarily concerning a restriction on their appearance or attire. For example, in March 2024, despite a court order permitting a religious ceremony at the Vedukunarimalai Adilingeswarar Hindu Temple in Vavuniya, police disrupted the event by dispersing devotees and arresting several individuals. In another instance in Trincomalee the A’Level examination results of 70 Muslim female students were initially withheld due to alleged dress code violations for wearing head covering, despite complying with rules and ensuring that their ears were visible. The report also goes on to analyse incidents of physical violence, damage to property, incitement, threats, intimidation and other non-physical attacks.
One main conclusion that the legal analysis arrives at is that there appears to be a clear link between the types of incidents faced by religious communities and the nature of the existential fear harboured by the perpetrator groups. For Christians, particularly those from non-mainline denominations often perceived as engaging in proselytizing, the fear of religious conversion appears to be driving legally impermissible restrictions on FoRB, discrimination, threats, intimidation and damage to property. Muslims primarily encountered violations of FoRB concerning religious appearance and cultural symbols such as attire as well as some discrimination in business activities, reflecting fears of perceived population growth, cultural and ideological influence and economic dominance. While large scale violence, such as the 2014 Aluthgama riots, was not observed during the study period, the same deep-seated fears continue to drive lower intensity incidents, posing a risk of future escalation. For Hindus, most incidents stemmed from sacred contested sites with conflicts tied to majoritarian claims and existential fears about Tamil claims to autonomy and a historical homeland evidenced by Hindu sacred sites. Across all communities, the data suggests that existential fears – whether real or imagined – combined with economic, political, social and cultural fault lines fuel targeted and often unlawful attacks on religious freedom.
The report highlights the involvement and impunity of state officials in many documented incidents, reaffirming earlier findings in reports published by the NCEASL that entrenched majoritarianism within state institutions leads to institutional decay and discrimination. The study reveals a serious erosion of the rule of law in relation to religious freedom, marked by the failure in interpreting and applying the law with precision and good faith. These include the routine imposition of impermissible restrictions on FoRB, often misapplying or disregarding Article 15(7) of the Constitution, and the disregard within institutions for enforcing elements of specific offences designed to protect vulnerable religious groups.
The report concludes by urging immediate reform and highlights two key areas for FoRB advocates to focus on. Firstly, it recommends campaigning for the establishment of an independent accountability mechanism with adequate powers and resources to investigate and prosecute law enforcement personnel for offences committed under the penal law to ensure criminal accountability, arguing that institutional reform is needed to break the cycle of impunity. Secondly, it emphasises the need for increased legal literacy with regard to FoRB among state actors and recommends promoting legal awareness on the scope of FoRB, permissible restrictions under the law and the specific elements constituting FoRB related offences. The report also calls on FoRB advocates to promote more robust enforcement of existing legal frameworks.
The release of the report coincides with the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) 2025 Annual Report which, for the third consecutive year, recommended that Sri Lanka be included on the Special Watch List for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). Both reports underscore a troubling trend of legal safeguards being undermined by state complicity, selective enforcement, and impunity. As the report published by the NCEASL illustrates, meaningful action is needed to restore the rule of law in relation to FoRB, protect vulnerable communities, and uphold the fundamental right to FoRB of all.