“The violence in Kandy is understood to have been sparked when a group of Muslim men in Digana town were accused of killing a man belonging to the majority Sinhala Buddhist community, who make up about 75% of the population.”

The international media is painting this as Buddhists gratuitously attacking Muslims, as they have in the case of Myanmar. In reality, as in Myanmar, the Muslims are responsible for beginning the violence. Then when the Buddhists fight back, the media portrays them as the aggressors. There may be excesses on their side, and if so, those responsible should be called to account, but here again we see that if the Muslims had not been aggressive and violent, there would have been no problem in the first place.

“Sri Lanka declares state of emergency after communal violence,” by Michael Safi and Amantha Perera, Guardian, March 6, 2018: