Video » Buddhist Monk sets himself on fire in Sri Lanka

Recently a Buddhist monk Bowatte Indararatna self immolated outside the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka. This staged event was captured by various media organisations, and was the first of its kind in Sri Lankan history. Although the monk was rushed to hospital after the incident, he later died as a result of his extensive burns.

Before he committed suicide, the monk appeared on State Media, in his interviews he clearly outlines demands to cease the slaughtering of cows in Sri Lanka, and also wanted restrictions against Christian groups converting Buddhists away from Buddhism.
He also informed them about his intention to stage this immolation in Kandy, hence the media was out in full force on that day, this is apparent from the vast amount of professional coverage of the event. He was even supplied with the fuel for it.
It is a disgrace that the state media instead of informing the police of his intentions, assisted him in his endeavors.

This monk was previously dismissed by the Extremist Buddhist Party JHU on disciplinary grounds. He then joined the extremists group Sinhala Ravaya, both these groups are using his death to promote their ideologies like banning cow slaughter, anti conversion and also upped their hate campaign against minorities.

Since the end of the civil war these extremist groups have launched numerous attacks on the minorities, ie Hindu, Christian and Muslim, and have been promoting racial hate campaigns.
The Sinhala Ravaya along with the Hardliners BBS have an on going hate campain against Muslims, including banning of the Halal certification, attack on Muslim Businesses, places of worship and on women wearing the Islamic dress.

It is crucial to note that these racist groups are not condoned by a majority of the Buddhist clergy and general public. They have been vocally condemned by many Buddhist groups and organisations, asking them to cease their hate campaigns, along with informing them they are going against Buddhist teachings.

On the issue of the cow slaughter, the Buddha never ordered his followers against this, infact nhis disciples ate a wide variety of meats. Nor is this found in any authentic Buddhist scriptures. Infact according to Theravada Buddhism which is predominant in Sri Lanka, when Devadatta tried to introduce five new practices into Buddhism, Buddha allowed all except the 5th, which was Vegetarianism.

Buddhism that is practiced in Sri Lanka is one that is intermingled with Hinduism, this is obvious from the Hindu Gods found in Buddhist temples adjacent to the Buddha statues, and both get worshiped. Hence they also venerate the cow, and eat all meats except beef. The target of this monk's immolation was against the killing of cows more than about animal rights.

Another aspect of this deviant Buddhism is the hatred against minorities, where they want to ban conversion to other religions which is a clearly an abuse of human rights.
This is just an addition to the many war crimes and human rights abuses, for which the Sri Lankan government has come under fire from the International community.

Note: Although it may appear the man in the white shirt came in and lit the monk on fire, if you pause it and then view slowly, you can see the monk had the lighter in his hand, and the man rushed in at the last minute to try and grab it off him and save his life.

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