The District Inter Religious Committees (DIRC) in Batticoloa and Trincomalee decided to work with the business communities to promote inter faith dialogue on peace and reconciliation because the business communities had capacity to link different faith and ethnic groups in the market, place under NPC’s project Inter-faith and Inter-ethnic dialogue in Sri Lanka.
The DIRCs organized networking meetings for DIRC members, business people and government officials. The fishing, farming and trading communities were represented.
During the meetings, the business people were able to meet others of different religions and ethnicities who were involved in the same livelihoods. They also met DIRC members and government officials to discuss the way forward on peace and reconciliation.
Many issues that had caused ethnic and religious tensions in the business community in the two districts were discussed such as posts on Facebook telling people not to patronize Muslim shops and that Muslim traders were insulting Buddhism.
The businessmen asked DIRC members, especially religious leaders, to tell people to find out the truth before disseminating such posts.