A Sri Lankan Muslim women attends a special prayer during Eid al-Fitr celebrations at the Galle Face esplanade in Colombo on August 31, 2011. Home to more than 19 million people, Muslims account for 7.5 percent of Sri Lankans. (AFP / Ishara S. Kodikara)

Sri Lanka has not issued a fresh burqa ban in March 2020

This article is more than one year old.
Published on March 6, 2020 at 04:55
3 min read
By AFP Sri Lanka

Multiple Facebook posts featuring a purported copy of a Sri Lankan government announcement about a new burqa ban have been shared thousands of times in March 2020. The claim is misleading; Sri Lanka has not issued a fresh ban on the burqa; the government previously implemented a temporary four-month ban following the Easter Sunday bombings in Colombo on April 21, 2019. There has not yet been a final ruling on a possible permanent burqa ban following proposals from Sri Lanka's parliamentary committee in February 2020.

This Facebook post claiming the Sri Lankan government has imposed a ban on the burqa was published on March 1, 2020.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of the Facebook post

The post includes a photo of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and a blurry government report, as well as a link to a YouTube video titled “Gazette Notification forbidding burqa issued”.

The post’s Sinhala-language caption translates to English as: “Burqa banned!! / Gazette notification issued.”

A similar claim was published in this YouTube video titled “No more Burka in Sri lanka”, which has been viewed over 56,000 times after it was published on February 20, 2020

A similar claim was also shared here, here, here, here and here on Facebook.

The claim is misleading; Sri Lanka has not issued a fresh ban on the burqa in March 2020.

A keyword search for the title of the YouTube video named in the misleading Facebook post found this video published on the channel for Sri Lankan television channel Ada Derana on May 15, 2019.

Below is a screenshot of the YouTube video titled “Gazette notification prohibiting the burqa issued”:

Screenshot of the Youtube video

Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook posts (L) and the Ada Derana video (R)

Screenshot comparison between the image in the misleading Facebook post (L) and Ada Derana video (R)

The Sri Lankan government imposed a temporary ban on wearing the burqa in May 2019 after a series of suicide bombing attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday left at least 290 dead. Here is an AFP report about the attacks.

On April 29, 2019 the then President Maithripala Sirisena tweeted: “Emergency Regulations will be banned from tomorrow (29.04.2017) with immediate effect on the use of face masks which will compromise the identity of the people in the country which could pose a threat to national and public security.”

A government gazette was later issued on May 13, 2019 which cemented the ban in law. It stated: “No person shall wear in any public place, any garment, clothing or other material concealing the full face which will in any manner cause any hindrance to the identification of such person.”

Below is a screenshot of the relevant section of the release:

Screenshot of the relevant section of the release

The ban was later lifted in September 2019 after the state of emergency expired, according to this report by local television channel Ada Derana.

On February 19, 2020, Sri Lanka's Parliamentary Committee on National Security put forward a proposal for an “immediate ban on the burqa”, according to this report by the local English-language newspaper Ceylon Today. But the government is yet to make a final ruling on the proposed ban.

As of February 19, 2020 AFP found no new government gazette on the website for the Department of Government Printing mentioning a burqa ban.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail