To avoid confrontation with India, Sri Lanka drops Imran Khan’s speech in Parliament

Colombo, Feb 22: Sri Lanka has cancelled a scheduled speech of Pakistan's prime minister, Imran Khan in parliament. This is being seen as a move to avoid confrontation with New Delhi.

A report titled 'Sri Lanka avoids clash with India by cancelling Khan's Parliament speech' by Dar Javed published in Colombo Gazette, the Colombo government cannot risk its relations with India when it is getting stuck in the Chinese debt-trap and India being the saviour for the world for distributing Covid-19 vaccines. India had recently gifted 5 lakh doses of Covishield to Sri Lanka.

In recent month there have been anti-Muslim sentiments in Sri Lanka as the Buddhist people have been protesting against animal sacrifices in Mosques. It was expected that Khan would have used the Muslim card during his visit to Sri Lanka, like the way he did in Afghanistan last year.

Javed said that the the Pakistan PM had in 2012 supported the Taliban and said that the terror activities were a holy war justified by Islamic law. "He has used the United Nations General Assembly to rake up Muslim cause, which has often been perceived as interference in the internal matters of the other countries. In October 2020, he urged the Muslim-majority countries to protest after French President Emmanuel Macron expressed concerns over the murder of a teacher by an Islamist radical. He wrote to the leaders of Muslim-majority countries 'to counter the growing Islamophobia in non-Muslim states'," Javed also said.

He also said that Khan would use the platform to make statements that will have serious ramifications for both the Buddhist people of Sri Lanka and the Rajapaksa government at the International level.

Looking at past incidents, it is evident that giving Khan a platform like Parliament to speak would be like to dice with death.