– Police lined the streets of the Sri Lankan highland town of Kandy on Sunday and the army was on standby as hardline Buddhist monks gathered for their first big assembly since Easter attacks by Islamist militants on churches and luxury hotels.
The group said the gathering will decide who to back in the presidential elections later this year in the Indian Ocean island nation where Buddhists make up about 70% of the population. The rest include ethnic Tamils, who are mostly Hindus, and Muslims. There has been increasing anti-Muslim violence in the country in recent weeks, blamed in part on Buddhist groups, in apparent reprisal for the April bombings claimed by Islamic State that killed more than 250 people.
M.J.M. Faizal, a Muslim who set up the Expo Leather store in Kandy 20 years ago, said late on Saturday he never had a problem with his neighbors even if they belonged to different communities.