Tens of thousands of pilgrims thronged Sri Lanka’s holy city of Kandy on Friday at the start of a rare display of a prized Buddhist relic, triggering traffic chaos and public protests.Devotees who had camped overnight outside the Temple of the Tooth complained that they were confined to a holding area after security checks and were deprived of food and water for hours.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake officially launched the exposition by offering flowers to what Buddhists in Sri Lanka believe to be the left canine tooth of the Buddha.Dissanayake’s office said he was accompanied by Colombo-based diplomats invited as guests to the 16th-century temple shortly before the exhibition opened to the public.Police rushed to prevent a stampede as the gates opened to allow pilgrims to walk past the relic displayed inside the temple.Several older people fainted and were assisted by bystanders.An AFP photographer saw one man stretched out on a bench, a small child fanning him with a bunch of papers while police looked on.”Let us out… We are suffering here. We don’t want to see the relic, please let us go,” one man shouted from inside the holding area as police attempted to confine the crowd within a fenced enclosure.A woman also pleaded to be let out of the holding area so she could return home. “We came out of devotion, but the promised food and water were not provided,” she shouted.- Long queues -Queues from three directions outside the temple compound stretched almost two kilometres (1.2 miles), with tens of thousands of devotees trying to get a glimpse of the relic.Police had estimated that about 200,000 people would visit Kandy daily during the 10-day display but local officials said they had underestimated the crowd badly.The main roads leading to Kandy, 115 kilometres (70 miles) northeast of Colombo, were blocked for long periods despite special traffic arrangements and parking areas reserved for pilgrims.Around 10,000 police officers have been deployed and armed troops reinforced security at the temple, which was targeted by Tamil separatists in a 1998 suicide attack that killed 16 people.Classes in Kandy have been cancelled, with schools repurposed to house the large number of security personnel sent to the city.More than a million people were estimated to have visited the UNESCO-designated temple when the tooth relic was last displayed in March 2009.The 1998 bombing of the temple destroyed walls and windows, in the process revealing 18th-century murals that had been plastered over several times through the site’s history.A section of the exposed murals is displayed in the temple’s tightly guarded museum, which says they date back to between 1707 and 1739 — a period when Kandy was the seat of the monarchy that ruled the island.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims thronged Sri Lanka’s holy city of Kandy on Friday at the start of a rare display of a prized Buddhist relic, triggering traffic chaos and public protests.Devotees who had camped overnight outside the Temple of the Tooth complained that they were confined to a holding area after security checks and were deprived of food and water for hours.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake officially launched the exposition by offering flowers to what Buddhists in Sri Lanka believe to be the left canine tooth of the Buddha.Dissanayake’s office said he was accompanied by Colombo-based diplomats invited as guests to the 16th-century temple shortly before the exhibition opened to the public.Police rushed to prevent a stampede as the gates opened to allow pilgrims to walk past the relic displayed inside the temple.Several older people fainted and were assisted by bystanders.An AFP photographer saw one man stretched out on a bench, a small child fanning him with a bunch of papers while police looked on.”Let us out… We are suffering here. We don’t want to see the relic, please let us go,” one man shouted from inside the holding area as police attempted to confine the crowd within a fenced enclosure.A woman also pleaded to be let out of the holding area so she could return home. “We came out of devotion, but the promised food and water were not provided,” she shouted.- Long queues -Queues from three directions outside the temple compound stretched almost two kilometres (1.2 miles), with tens of thousands of devotees trying to get a glimpse of the relic.Police had estimated that about 200,000 people would visit Kandy daily during the 10-day display but local officials said they had underestimated the crowd badly.The main roads leading to Kandy, 115 kilometres (70 miles) northeast of Colombo, were blocked for long periods despite special traffic arrangements and parking areas reserved for pilgrims.Around 10,000 police officers have been deployed and armed troops reinforced security at the temple, which was targeted by Tamil separatists in a 1998 suicide attack that killed 16 people.Classes in Kandy have been cancelled, with schools repurposed to house the large number of security personnel sent to the city.More than a million people were estimated to have visited the UNESCO-designated temple when the tooth relic was last displayed in March 2009.The 1998 bombing of the temple destroyed walls and windows, in the process revealing 18th-century murals that had been plastered over several times through the site’s history.A section of the exposed murals is displayed in the temple’s tightly guarded museum, which says they date back to between 1707 and 1739 — a period when Kandy was the seat of the monarchy that ruled the island.
