ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s president has apologised for the government’s decision to enforce cremations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This house would like to apologise for what happened,” Ranil Wickremesinghe said in parliament on Tuesday. “During this time there was a lot of pain, mainly felt by the Muslims, but also Hindus, Buddhists and Christians, I know who also like to bury.”
He said that a committee appointed to look into the matter at the time recommended cremation, a decision which was upheld by the supreme court.
“So the government had to follow that. There was no choice at that stage.”
Sri Lanka would bring a law that would allow the right of burial, right of cremation or gifting one’s body to medical institutions.
“In this country any person should have the right to determine whether he or she is buried, cremated or given to the medical faculty.”
The Sri Lanka government’s stubborn insistence, under the presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2020, 2021, on cremating Muslim and Christian victims of the virus, going against their religious believes, drew widespread condemnation from UN experts and Muslim countries.
Rajapaksa’s arrogant policy, which he later blamed on experts, led the OIC and Middle East nations to reject Sri Lanka’s repeated requests for credit lines to buy oil and loans before the country collapsed after an unprecedented economic crisis in 2022. (Colombo/Jun18/2024