MUSLIM HATE IN SRI LANKA
As Sri Lanka mourns, Islamic
State claims Easter bombings
By EMILY SCHMALL and KRISHAN
FRANCIS
April 23, 2019
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — As the
death toll from the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka rose to 321 on
Tuesday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility and released
images that purported to show the attackers, while the country’s prime
minister warned that several suspects armed with explosives are still
at large.
Another top government official
said the suicide bombings at the churches, hotels and other sites were
carried out by Islamic fundamentalists in apparent retaliation for the
New Zealand mosque massacres last month that a white supremacist has
been charged with carrying out.
The Islamic State group, which
has lost all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, has made a
series of unsupported claims of responsibility and Prime Minister
Ranil Wickremesinghe said that investigators were still determining
the extent of the bombers’ foreign links.
Sri Lankan authorities have
blamed the attacks on National Towheed Jamaar, a little-known Islamic
extremist group in the island nation. Its leader, alternately known as
Mohammed Zahran or Zahran Hashmi, became known to Muslim leaders three
years ago for his incendiary speeches online.
The IS group’s Aamaq news agency
released an image purported to show the leader of the attackers,
standing amid seven others whose faces are covered. The group did not
provide any other evidence for its claim, and the identities of those
depicted in the image were not independently verified.
Meanwhile, in an address to
Parliament, Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister of defense, said
“weakness” within Sri Lanka’s security apparatus led to the failure to
prevent the nine bombings.
“By now it has been established
that the intelligence units were aware of this attack and a group of
responsible people were informed about the impending attack,”
Wijewardene said. “However, this information has been circulated among
only a few officials.”
In a live address to the nation
late Tuesday, Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena said he also
was kept in the dark on the intelligence about the planned attacks and
vowed to “take stern action” against the officials who failed to share
the information. He also pledged “a complete restructuring” of the
security forces.
Wijewardene said the government
had evidence that the bombings were carried out “by an Islamic
fundamentalist group” in retaliation for the March 15 mosque shootings
in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 50 people, although he did
not disclose what the evidence was.
The office of New Zealand Prime
Minister Jacinda Ardern issued a statement responding to the
Christchurch claim that described Sri Lanka’s investigation as “in its
early stages.”
“New Zealand has not yet seen
any intelligence upon which such an assessment might be based,” it
said. An Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was
arrested in the Christchurch shootings.
As Sri Lanka’s leaders wrangled
over the apparent intelligence failure, security was out in force for
a national day of mourning Tuesday.
In the city of Negombo, Cardinal
Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, held a funeral service in
the courtyard of St. Sebastian Church, where 110 people were killed in
one of the bombings. Hundreds of military and police personnel
attended the service, and nuns, priests and community members were
frisked as they arrived.
Because of the toll, the service
lasted several hours, with caskets brought in three and four at a
time, accompanied by sobbing relatives. The coffins were then taken to
a mass burial site and covered by three earth movers.
Elsewhere in Negombo, where
soldiers stood every few feet, private memorials were held with tents
set up on lawns for guests.
Also Tuesday, the military
employed special police powers that it last used during a devastating
civil war that ended in 2009. Among the 40 people arrested on
suspicion of links to the bombings were the driver of a van allegedly
used by the suicide attackers and the owner of a house where some of
them lived.
A nationwide curfew began at 9
p.m.
The near-simultaneous bombings
Sunday at three churches and three luxury hotels, as well as three
related blasts, left 321 dead and 500 wounded, representing Sri
Lanka’s deadliest violence in a decade. The U.N. children’s agency
said the dead included at least 45 children.
In some places, entire families
fell victim. On Easter, as they did every Sunday, Berlington Joseph
Gomez and his wife, Chandrika Arumugam, went to church at Colombo’s
St. Anthony’s Shrine. And as always, they brought their three sons:
9-year-old Bevon, 6-year-old Clavon and 11-month-old Avon.
Two days later, they were all
being mourned by dozens of neighbors gathered at the modest home of
Berlington’s father, Joseph Gomez.
“All family, all generation, is
lost,” Gomez said.
Word from international
intelligence agencies that the local group National Towheed Jamaar was
planning attacks apparently didn’t reach the prime minister’s office
until after the massacre, exposing the continuing turmoil in the
highest levels of government.
On April 11, Priyalal
Disanayaka, the deputy inspector general of police, signed a letter
addressed to directors of four Sri Lankan security agencies, warning
them a group was planning a suicide attack.
The intelligence report attached
to his letter, which has circulated on social media, identified the
group as National Towheed Jamaar and its leader as Zahran Hashmi, and
said it was targeting “some important churches” in a suicide attack
that was planned to take place “shortly.”
The report identified six
individuals likely to be involved in the plot, including someone it
said had been building support for Zahran and was in hiding since the
group clashed with another religious organization in 2018.
On Monday, Sri Lanka’s health
minister held up a copy of the intelligence report while describing
its contents, spurring questions about what police had done to protect
the public. It was not immediately clear what steps were taken by any
of these security directors. Disanayaka did not answer calls or
messages seeking comment.
Heightened security was evident
at an international airport outside the capital where security
personnel patrolled with explosives-sniffing dogs, checked car trunks
and questioned drivers. Police also ordered that anyone leaving a
parked car unattended must leave a note with their phone number on it.
Postal workers were not accepting pre-wrapped parcels.
A block on most social media
since the attacks has left a vacuum of information, fueling confusion
and giving little reassurance the danger had passed. Even after an
overnight curfew ended, the streets of central Colombo were mostly
deserted Tuesday and shops closed as armed soldiers stood guard.
Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could unleash instability
and he vowed to “vest all necessary powers with the defense forces” to
act against those responsible. At a later news conference, he warned
that more militants and explosives were “out there.”
Authorities said they knew where
the group trained and had safe houses, but did not identify any of the
seven suicide bombers, whose bodies were recovered, or the other
suspects taken into custody. All seven bombers were Sri Lankans, but
authorities said they strongly suspected foreign links.
The history of Buddhist-majority
Sri Lanka, a country of 21 million including large Hindu, Muslim and
Christian minorities, is rife with ethnic and sectarian conflict.
In the nation’s 26-year civil
war, the Tamil Tigers, a powerful rebel army known for using suicide
bombers, had little history of targeting Christians and was crushed by
the government in 2009. Anti-Muslim bigotry fed by Buddhist
nationalists has swept the country recently.
In March 2018, Buddhist mobs
ransacked businesses and set houses on fire in Muslim neighborhoods
around Kandy, a city in central Sri Lanka that is popular with
tourists.
After the mob attacks, Sri
Lanka’s government also blocked some social media sites, hoping to
slow the spread of false information or threats that could incite more
violence.
Sri Lanka has no history of
Islamic militancy. Its small Christian community has seen only
scattered incidents of harassment.
Sri Lanka grapples with Islamic threat
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - While the emergence of armed Islamic groups in Sri Lanka's
explosive Eastern province as well as increasing clashes between
moderate and hardline Muslims are cause for serious concern, the
raising specter of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism there is just as
worrying.
For several years, reports from the violence-torn, ethnically diverse
Eastern province have drawn attention to the emergence of armed Muslim
groups. Names such as Osama Group, the Muttur Jetty Group and the Knox
Group have often figured into reports in the media. Analysts this
correspondent spoke to in Colombo recently admitted to hearing about
Islamic militias active in the East but not knowing much about them.
While "money from the Middle East" is believed to be funding the Muslim
militias in Sri Lanka's Eastern province, it is local concerns - fear
of anti-Muslim violence by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
and apprehension that the Sri Lankan government would not address
Muslim grievances - that appear to be encouraging Muslims to take up
arms. The easy availability of guns in this strife-torn province has
facilitated the emergence of armed militias among Muslims.
During the 1980s, it was the Sri Lankan government of the time -
specifically the Special Task Force - that provided Muslims with
weapons, ostensibly so they could protect themselves against Tamil
militant groups. By arming Muslims, sections in the Lankan government
were also hoping to deepen the divide between the Tamils and the
Muslims in the Eastern province. When the LTTE unleashed violence
against Muslims from 1990 onwards, many Muslim lads picked up weapons,
if only to protect their homes and villages from Tiger terror.
The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is often depicted as one between the
island's Sinhalese and Tamils. The Muslim dimension of the conflict is
often ignored. Most Sinhalese are Buddhists while most Tamils are
Hindus, although there are a sizeable number of Tamil Christians as
well. Unlike the island's Buddhists, Christians or Hindus, whose
identity stems from the language that they speak, religion determines
the identity of Sri Lanka's Muslims. The Muslims speak Tamil in
Tamil-dominated areas and Sinhalese on the rest of the island.
The demographic complexity of the Eastern province - once predominantly
Tamil, it is today a volatile mix of Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim
populations - makes it a veritable ethnic tinderbox. It is the East
that witnessed the worst of the two-decades-long civil war. It was here
that the bloodiest inter-ethnic killings and internecine fighting took
place. It is here that the ceasefire today is the most fragile. And it
is the East that is expected to explode first if the current ceasefire
collapses. It is in this context that the reported proliferation of
armed Muslim militias assumes importance. Unlike in the past, when
Muslims were by and large at the receiving end of violent attacks by
government forces and Tiger militants, this time the Muslim militias
can be expected to unleash violence and fight back.
Armed Muslim groups have existed for several years in the East. What
has heightened concern about them today is that they are being equated
with jihadi groups. The post-September 11, 2001, paranoia with all
things Muslim has resulted in many Sri Lankans and others equating the
visible assertion of Muslim identity - more women wear the burqa and
the hijab today than they did in the past, especially in the East but
also in cities like the capital Colombo - with growing Islamic
fundamentalism.
There is a visible assertion of orthodox Islamists within the Muslim
community. Radical Muslims are said to have attacked moderate Muslims
for engaging in "un-Islamic activity", such as gambling, drinking and
so on. They have attacked Muslims belonging to more liberal and
syncretic sects. In October last year, followers of Sufi Islam in the
town of Kattankudy near Batticaloa in the Eastern province were
attacked and their mosque demolished by mobs incited by orthodox
Wahhabi clerics trained in Saudi Arabia. It was even reported that
hundreds of Sufi Muslims were forcibly converted to the orthodox faith.
But this assertion of orthodoxy is only in a few pockets. It is not
widespread. Reports of the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist
terrorism in the East are not just a flawed reading of the current
situation, but also they are dangerous. Analysts are warning that the
specter of Islamic extremism could be used by the LTTE to convince
countries such as India and the United States, which have branded it as
terrorist and are intensely worried about radical Islamists, that the
Tigers could serve as an important buffer against the rise of radical
Islamist groups in the East.
Tisarane Gunasekara, writing in the Asian Tribune, argues: "If it can
be shown that armed Islamic fundamentalists exist and are becoming
stronger in the East, then it will be easy to divert the attention of
the global and the regional superpowers away from the Tigers to this
new threat. In fact, in such a context the LTTE might even be able to
persuade one or both countries to accept its presence as a necessary
buffer against the growing 'Islamic threat' and perhaps even to become
an ally in the struggle against this new threat."
There are people who are willing to buy the argument of the immense
threat currently posed by Islamic fundamentalism in Sri Lanka. In
April, Steen Joergensen, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission chief for the
Batticaloa district, expressed his concern over growing religious
extremism among Muslims. "I do not think it is a healthy sign if
Muslims here practice their religion as extremists do," Joergensen told
the Pakistani daily Dawn. "There are indications that Muslims in the
region are incited with extremists views. I have seen a clear increase
in the number of completely covered women. A large number of people are
sent to Saudi Arabia to study the Koran in the orthodox way."
Incidentally, Joergensen hasn't spoken up about the acquisition of arms
by the LTTE, its conscription of children, its killing of political
opponents and so on, even though these are violations of the 2002
ceasefire agreement. But the assertion of Muslim identity is seen as a
worrying threat.
The assertion of Islamic fundamentalism in the East and the emergence
of armed Muslim militias there is also worrying. However, the problem
is not as serious as it is being made out. The militias are still small
- most of them have about a dozen men. And while they might spew jihadi
rhetoric occasionally and have names linking themselves to al-Qaeda,
they appear to be driven more by local concerns - protecting themselves
and their people against the LTTE - rather than by global visions of
jihad. Neither do they seem keen to overthrow the Sri Lankan state.
At the same time, the threat posed by these militias to the security
situation in the East could turn problematic in the future. And that
would become difficult to tackle if the Islamic fundamentalism that is
visible in pockets today grips the community, providing the militias
the support they need to thrive.
To nip in the bud the long-term threat posed by radical Islamic groups
it is essential that Sri Lanka tackles the clear and present danger
posed by the LTTE's campaign to silence the claims of Muslims and of
Tamils who don't agree with its methods. Successive Sri Lankan
governments have ignored the claims of Muslims in order to appease the
LTTE. This has had the effect of deepening Muslim alienation and anger.
The most effective buffer against the proliferation of radical Islamic
groups in Sri Lanka's east would be a provision of institutional
guarantees protecting the security and rights of Muslims. Believing
that the LTTE could be an effective buffer against Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism is naive and foolish. The LTTE cannot provide
the solution when it is part of the problem.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.