Visit to Sri Lanka — Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief (Ahmed Shaheed), A/HRC/43/48/Add.2

The single most authoritative UN document on Sri Lanka's religion-state architecture. Following an 11-day country visit (Aug 2019), SR Shaheed documented: (a) the structural effect of Article 9 on minority religious communities; (b) the 2008 Ministry of Buddha Sasana Circular requiring state approval for any new place of worship — applied overwhelmingly against evangelical Christian congregations; (c) anti-Muslim hate-speech & violence patterns (Aluthgama, Digana); (d) the encroachment of vihara construction on Hindu temple lands and archaeological sites in the Northern and Eastern Provinces; (e) the targeting of Hill Country Tamil estate workers' kovils. This is the canonical UN finding — Velicham must surface it for any religion-state question.