Sri Lanka moves to ban the burqa
Cabinet approved a ban on face coverings in April 2021, two years after the Easter bombings, alongside the closure of over a thousand Islamic schools. Human Rights Watch and the ICJ called it discriminatory.
Sri Lanka's Cabinet approved, on 27 April 2021, a proposal to ban face coverings including the burqa and niqab on national security grounds.
The background
The Easter Sunday 2019 bombings, coordinated suicide attacks on churches and hotels that killed over 250 people, were followed by a temporary ban on the full face veil. Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekara put the permanent proposal forward in March 2021, alongside plans to close more than a thousand Islamic schools the government said were unregistered and outside the national curriculum.
The objection
Human Rights Watch stated there is no evidence that face veils themselves pose a security threat sufficient to justify a ban. The International Commission of Jurists called on Sri Lanka's parliament to reject the proposal outright, describing it as discriminatory and a violation of the right to freedom of religion.
Why this belongs beside the European bans
The justification here is explicitly counter-terrorism rather than the secularism or "living together" reasoning used in France and Belgium. That is a different argument, aimed at a different Muslim minority, in a country where the population is majority Buddhist rather than majority Christian or secular. The same practice draws restriction under more than one rationale, in more than one kind of society.
Sources. Al Jazeera · Arab News · International Commission of Jurists