Salt Lake City, USA - "Anti-conversion" legislation in Sri Lanka could target missionaries and faith-based humanitarian aid workers, according to The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
Among the faith-based groups affected by the bill would be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has missionaries in the Southeast Asian country and has provided disaster relief there in the wake of last winter's tsunami. LDS humanitarian workers do not proselytize, says church spokesman Dale Bills, but the proposed law targets all relief workers linked to any religion, according to Becket Fund legal counsel Roger Severino.
"If you tie aid to religious identity, then you will run afoul of the law. You don't have to be there preaching as you hand out aid. You only have to have a religious identity and an aid component," Severino says. "The law would be an unmitigated disaster for religious liberty if it's passed" and would affect many tsunami relief groups, he says.
The Becket Fund, based in Washington, D.C., is an international, interfaith law firm that defines its mission as "protecting the free expression of all religious traditions."
"Anti-conversion hysteria has been building" in Sri Lanka in recent years, Severino says, and has led to violence. More than 150 churches have been burned to the ground, pastors have been beaten in front of their congregations, and female Christian workers have been sexually assaulted.
"It's coming from, believe it or not, militant Buddhists," he says. A particular strain of Buddhist theology on the island — which is now 70 percent Buddhist — believes that Buddha himself visited Sri Lanka and established a sanctuary for "pure" Buddhism.
The fear among these Buddhists, he says, is that foreign religions will try to dominate the island. But the percent of religious minorities there has actually held constant for decades, and the percentage of Christians in particular has actually declined, he says. The country is currently 15 percent Hindu, 8 percent Muslim and 7 percent Christian.
Last summer, parts of an anti-conversion bill introduced by a new Buddhist monk party, the JHU, were ruled unconstitutional by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. But the core of the bill — that any link between religious belief and humanitarian assistance is illegal — was found constitutional. The court has also ruled that "the constitution does not recognize a fundamental right to propagate a religion." A new bill, which eliminates the unconstitutional details, is expected to be introduced to the Parliament in April.
One clause in the draft bill stipulates that a non-Sri Lankan found guilty of attempted conversion will face up to seven years in jail and then be deported from the country. Sri Lankans found guilty would be sentenced to jail.
"Starting a church would not in itself run afoul of the law," Severino says. "But starting a church and trying to spread the faith would be a whole different matter."
The bill has the support of the government and is expected to pass if it first is approved by the country's Supreme Court, according to Severino. The Becket Fund will challenge the bill before the court, hoping to persuade the justices that Sri Lanka has already signed on to human rights and other international obligations.
"We think there will be mounting international pressure," he predicts, especially from faith-based groups that are providing tsunami relief. The bill would "force religious organizations, for their own safety, to stop giving aid," he says.