"The gathering had the feel of a political rally. At the front door to the meditation hall, members of the governing Union Solidarity and Development Party — their logo (a lion) visible on their shirts — were busy handing out to arriving monks stickers bearing the flag of Buddhism with three Asiatic lions and the number 969, a traditional symbol of Buddha, his teachings and the monkhood... ...a bill to prohibit non-Buddhists from marrying Buddhist women — the idea being to protect the women from having to convert to Islam when they marry Muslims. An elderly monk, Wimala Buddhi, announced that any member of Parliament who opposed the bill would face reprisals. “I will wish to know the names of the M.P.’s who object,” he said. “Those M.P.’s will lose their votes in the 2015 elections and go down into the gutters.”
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 13:17:01 +0000