Attacks on Sri Lankan Muslims condemned.

All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, the apex body of Indian Muslim organisations, condemned the continuing attacks on the Muslim minority in Sri Lanka since last Sunday. President of AIMMM, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan said the continuing attacks, murders and burning of Muslim localities and uprooting of thousands of Muslims by armed Sinhala extremists is a blot on the face of Sri Lanka and proves that the Sri Lankan government has not learnt any lesson from the Tamil revolt which was extinguished at great cost over three decades of blood-letting.

The Sri Lankan government and Sinhala chauvinists have forgotten that Sri Lankan Muslims, including the Tamil-speaking ones, firmly stood with the government in that conflict and bore the brunt of LTTE attacks, killings and mass uprootings. Now the Sinhala chauvinists, with tacit government support, are forcing a peaceful and patriotic community to take up arms to defend itself. Such a development will not help anyone in Srilanka which has already paid a heavy price as a result of the Tamil insurgency which too was a result of similar Sinhala chauvinist attacks on Tamils in the 1980s. Dr Khan appealed to the Sri Lankan government to check Sinhala extremists before the violence snowballs into a major conflict.