Colombo: Sri Lankan Government said it will soon ban wearing burqa in the country. The Sri Lankan Government announced using a controversial anti-terror law to deal with religious extremism on Saturday.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promulgated regulations allowing the detention of anyone suspected of causing “acts of violence or religious, racial or communal disharmony or feelings of ill will or hostility between different communities”. The rules, effective Friday, have been set up under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which both local and international rights groups have repeatedly asked Colombo to repeal.

It gave sweeping powers to detain suspects for up to two years for “deradicalisation”. Separately, the government also said it will soon outlaw the burqa, formalizing a temporary ban imposed in April 2019 after deadly bomb attacks blamed on local jihadists.

President Rajapaksa, who came to power with a promise to battle Islamic extremism, announced the “deradicalisation from holding violent extremist religious ideology” measures in a gazette notification seen by AFP Saturday.

Sri Lankan Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera announced Saturday that the burqa, a loose garment covering from head to toe and worn in public in many Islamic states, was a threat to Sri Lanka’s national security. Weerasekera said he signed documents outlawing the burqa, but they need to be approved by the Cabinet of Ministers and Parliament where the Government has a two-thirds majority to see its bills through.

Sri Lanka had used emergency laws to impose a temporary ban on the garment soon after the April 2019 Jihadi bombings against three churches on the island killed 279 people. Burqa wearers are not commonly seen in Buddhist majority Sri Lanka where Muslims are a small minority accounting for 10 percent of the country’s 21 million population.