Issue 414, May 1, 2019
The bombing of Churches and Hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday in which more than 250 people have died is one of the bloodiest in human history. The dastardly act goes against the very principle of Easter Sunday, an occasion on which Christians pray their Lord, who suffered so that humanity can be safer and happier.
A week later, Churches across Sri Lanka suspended Sunday mass as security concerns remained high along with social tension.
Islamist groups claim
The country has been on high alert, with nearly 10,000 soldiers deployed across the Island to carry out searches and hunt down members of two local Islamist groups believed to have carried out the attack.
Authorities have detained over 100 people since the bombings in three churches and four hotels, most of which were in the capital Colombo.
The Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith held a solemn special mass from a Church adjacent to his house that was broadcast live across local television and radio.
“We cannot kill someone in the name of God. It is a great tragedy,” he said in his Sermon, attended by President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Imported animus
As the Economist said, the perpetrators were jihadists from the Tamil-speaking Muslim minority that accounts for about 10% of Sri Lanka’s 23 million people. Tamil Muslims have no history of animosity with the even smaller Christian minority.
“Instead, the animus seems to have been imported: on April 23, 2019, Islamic State claimed to have instigated the atrocities, apparently in conjunction with a local extremist group. That would make them the deadliest incident of international terrorism since the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. They are also by far the bloodiest event to shake Sri Lanka since the end of a long civil war ten years ago.”
That conflict, which pitted Tamil-speaking Hindu separatists against the government, which is dominated by Sinhala-speaking Buddhists, left perhaps 70,000 dead.
No one expects the bombings to reignite such strife, though fears of revenge attacks against Muslims have prompted heavy security deployments, curfews and the declaration of a state of emergency.
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