The long-standing conflict between Sri Lankan Buddhists and the Christian missionaries they accuse of conducting unethical or coerced conversions gained more international attention last week as the World Evangelical Alliance met with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to lobby against Sri Lanka’s proposed anti-conversion law, the Freedom of Religion Bill, and the Institute on Religion and Public Policy also discussed the legislation at a roundtable discussion with Sri Lanka’s U.S. ambassador. Though the issue of coercive conversions made headlines after the tsunami, when several Christian aid groups announced their intentions to use the disaster to win souls for Christ, in Sri Lanka, the fight’s been going on for years, with the Buddhist majority accusing missionaries of taking advantage of children and the extremely poor by conditioning their help or offers of food on participation in Christian activities, and evangelical aid groups countering that their missionaries and followers are under siege by a repressive, anti-Christian government. As coverage of the issue goes, it’s hard to find anything remotely unbiased: with few mainstream media outlets covering the story, the only options are reports issued from the two battle camps — the American evangelical press claiming religious persecution, and the local Sri Lankan or Indian press claiming neo-colonialism. So this offering, from the Asian Tribune, is no different, and falls in the second category. But it’s a decent, if openly partisan, introduction to an underreported story that looks like it’s going to grow.