Speaking to the BBC, the senior Buddhist monk who led the protest against a mosque in Dambulla has stated that footage from the protest has been “technically manipulated”.
The footage showed a mob of 2,000 Sinhala protestors, led by the monk Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, violently attacking a long-standing mosque in the area while security forces stood by. It also showed a monk disrobing and exposing himself in front of the mosque, expressing his outrage that the mosque had been built in the area.
 Screenshot from News 1st TV, showing a Buddhist monk exposing himself in front of Dambulla mosque |
The monk told the BBC that,
"Videos that portrayed the protest as violent were technically manipulated."
After the airing of the Channel 4 documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killings Fields”, senior Sri Lankan government officials were also quick to claim that the footage was “fake”, despite evidence to the contrary.
See our earlier post: Monks and the mob in Dambulla (23 April 2012)
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