Sri Lanka Cremates Muslim Covid-19 Victims From Religious Needs

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Sri Lanka explained Wednesday it would cremate the bodies of 19 Muslim coronavirus victims, overriding the families’ objections towards the contentious coverage.

The island nation has been suffering from a surge in scenarios since October, with the quantity of bacterial infections enhanced extra than 8-fold considering that then to in excess of 29,300 and 142 lifeless.

Coronavirus victims’ bodies are claimed by families and then cremated — a observe forbidden below Islamic law — under the strict supervision of well being authorities.

But families of 19 Muslims killed by the virus have refused to declare the bodies from a morgue in the capital Colombo, triggering the edict by Lawyer-Common Dappula de Livera.

“Bodies of Covid-19 victims not claimed by families can be cremated in terms of quarantine rules,” De Livera’s spokeswoman said, introducing that the bodies would be cremated this week.

5 had been cremated on Wednesday, police stated.

The coverage has been challenged by Muslims, with 12 petitions submitted by the minority group and civil society teams in the Supreme Court docket.

But the top rated court docket turned down the petitions last week, with out giving good reasons why it created that conclusion.

The Sri Lanka Muslim Council has said a majority of the country’s coronavirus victims ended up Muslim.

A council spokesman added that associates of the neighborhood feared looking for health care enable if Covid-19 constructive, as they did not want to be cremated.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation final thirty day period urged Colombo to permit Muslims to bury their household users “in line with their religious beliefs and obligations”.

Sri Lanka produced Covid-19 cremations compulsory in April amid fears spread by influential Buddhist monks — who aid President Gotabaya Rajapaksa — that burying bodies could contaminate groundwater and distribute the disease.

The Globe Wellness Organisation states both of those burials and cremations are permitted.

There have been ongoing tensions among Muslims — who make up 10 p.c of Sri Lanka’s 21 million populace — and the greater part Sinhalese who are mostly Buddhists, right after neighborhood jihadists have been accused of getting at the rear of the fatal 2019 Easter bombings.