Sri Lankan official targeted with fabricated quote over development in sacred Buddhist city

As Sri Lanka develops an ancient city home to Buddhist heritage sites, a fabricated news graphic was shared in posts falsely claiming a government minister said places of worship from other religions should also be built there. The minister’s purported quote struck a nerve in the Buddhist-majority country, where the ruling coalition has been accused by opposition critics of pursuing an anti-Buddhist policy. The minister told AFP the claim is entirely false and he made no such statement, while the news organisation whose logo was used in the graphic also said it did not publish it.