The war crimes-accused head of the Sri Lankan army was the chief guest at a grand Sinhala Buddhist ceremony at the controversial Kuragala site this week, where a giant lion statue and restored stupa were unveiled.
Photographs posted on the Sri Lankan army website and social media pages show Shavendra Silva dressed in all white, laying flowers before the stupa and handing offerings to Sinhala Buddhist monks, as the grand opening of the site took place on Sunday.
The restoration of the Kuragala site took place in just 13 months. “Army troops made up the major share of the manpower for this gigantic task,” declared an official military website earlier this year, when Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa visited the site.
As Silva visited today, a helicopter flew overhead, whilst hundreds of Sri Lankan troops and worshippers gathered.
Meanwhile, a nearby Islamic site remains under threat.
In 2013, the Sinhala Buddhist extremist group Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) called for the removal of the mosque in Kuragala, claiming that “Muslim fundamentalists” have taken over the site and destroyed historical evidence of the area’s Buddhist heritage. Two years later, the general secretary of the BBS, Galagodaaththe Gnanasara said the organisation would invade Kuragala and dismantle the mosque “brick by brick”.
In 2015, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Arts and Culture Nandimitra Ekanayake said Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed a committee to investigate the location, which then established that the mosque sat on a Buddhist archaeological site.
The issue has continued to raise ire from Sinhala Buddhist extremists with the Daily News publishing an article last year which claimed “the Mosque administration is carried out by a Trust and they have changed the history of Kuragala and are engaged in an attempt to mislead not only this country but people worldwide”.
“For this purpose they have re-created a false stone inscription,” the article continued. “These extremists spread stories which have absolutely no source.”
