The state denied Christians victim-status, and nationalists blamed victims for their own persecution.

Evidence

For instance, when a woman complained to the police about the attack on her place of worship, she was told: “You are a Christian. You have no right to speak [for] this is a Buddhist country” (Weerasooriya 2004). Apologists for the nationalists claimed that the church attacks “were self inflicted by certain Evangelical pastors,” who thereafter accused Sinhalese Buddhists for the nefarious actions. — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 250

Categorization

• XREF: Police denial of Christian standing and victim-blaming mirrors patterns of state denial documented in Islamophobia literature (official denial enabling harm to expand) and in intergroup threat literatures.