A Sri Lankan court has given suspended jail terms to three French tourists for wounding the religious feelings of Buddhists1 by taking pictures deemed insulting.
斯里兰卡一家法院以伤害佛教徒的宗教情怀为罪名判处三名法国游客缓期监禁，她们因与佛像拍照而被认为无礼。
Two women and one man were detained in the southern town of Galle after a photographic laboratory alerted police.
The pictures show the travellers posing with
Buddha3 statues and pretending to kiss one of them.
Mistreatment of Buddhist images and artefacts is
strictly5 taboo6 in the country. The incident is
alleged7 to have taken place at a temple in central Sri Lanka.
Website posting
Police spokesman, Ajith Rohana, told the BBC the French party had visited the laboratory to get pictures printed.
The images were impounded after the owner of the photographic laboratory alerted police, but they were later posted on a Sri Lankan website.
On Tuesday a
magistrate8 sentenced the trio to six months in prison with hard labour, suspended for five years - which means they will not actually serve any time in jail. The court also
levied9 a small fine on them.
They were convicted under a section of the
Penal10 Code which
outlaws11 deeds intended to wound or insult "the religious feelings of any class of persons" through acts committed in, upon or near sacred objects or places of worship.
Last month there were reports that five Arabs visiting the island were arrested for distributing "literature insulting to
Buddhism12".
In 2010 two Sri Lankan Muslim traders were given suspended jail sentences for selling keyrings（钥匙扣） containing an image of Buddha.
That same year Sri Lanka denied a visa to the R&B star Akon, who had been due to perform a concert. It happened after public protests over one of his music videos which
briefly13 showed scantily-clad women dancing in front of a Buddha statue.
There is currently widespread excitement in Sri Lanka as the Kapilvastu
Relics14 - believed to be bones of Lord Buddha - have been brought to the island from India for a two-week tour of temples.
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