The root of all evil

Professor Michael K. Jerryson of Youngstown State University, Ohio, USA, testified on the subject of ‘Human Rights Concerns in Sri Lanka’ before the ‘Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, House Committee on Foreign Affairs (of the US. House of Representatives) on June 20, 2018.

- BY ROHANA R. WASALA

While delivering his statement, Jerryson submitted a written testimony into the record. He thanked Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass, and other Members of the Committee for ‘addressing a very important issue facing Sri Lanka, which is also a larger issue of peace and stability for South and South Asia today’.

The witness described himself as ‘a professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University’ who had ‘worked on Buddhism and violence for over 20 years’ from 1998 until then (2018). He claimed that he had travelled, and done his fieldwork, in Asia. His work involved ‘living and interviewing Buddhist civilians and monks involved in Buddhist-supported violence’ (!). Then he mentioned a list of his then recent publications including his ‘Mongolian Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of the Sangha (Silk Worm, 2008) ..., and ‘Violence and the world’s Religious Traditions (Oxford, 2016).

Jerryson explained that his ‘position’ as a scholar of religion was ‘not to judge a religion or its adherents, but rather to illuminate the ways in which religious values motivate or influence people and social patterns’. He said that, in his work, he ‘found that religion is one of the most undervalued and misunderstood causes for violence and for reconciliation in the contemporary world’. Moving towards his central topic, he identified ‘strong pervasive identifications’ as the basic cause of the current problems in Sri Lanka.