A monk’s sudden death triggered waves of anti-Christian attacks.

Evidence

Within a month of the cremation, fifty-four places of worship had been attacked, which helps to explain the higher number of attacks for 2003 and 2004. By some accounts, over 140 places of worship were forced to close down within four months of the monk’s death. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 247

Categorization

• XREF: A striking natural-experiment datum for the manufacture-of-threat thesis: violence spiked sharply following a non-military, non-state-threat event — the death plus ‘conspiracy’ narrative of one charismatic monk. — connects to: A popular monk’s rhetoric redirected community violence at new targets. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 246; Nationalist monks weaponized a death anniversary to ban cultural events and incite grenade attacks. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 248
• QUESTION: Compare with the reader’s research on belief-hardening: does a martyrdom/assassination narrative backfire when fact-checked (autopsy), or does it persist? Only follows in the last paragraph of the chapter’s direct evidence.