Rising above the carnage of Easter Sunday

To Christians, the message of the feast of Easter is ‘Resurrection’, ‘Life’, and ‘Hope’. Jesus Christ was humiliated, tortured stripped naked, nailed to a cross and put to death in the most humiliating and painful manner.   

Yet, Christ rose from the dead.   

The message of Easter is therefore of the conquering of death, the rebirth of Hope and a festival of Life. It signifies that death is not the end, but rather that death signifies a new beginning.   
The devastating series of explosions carried out by suicide bombers, which ripped through a series of targets in Sri Lanka, ranging from the Zion Church Batticaloa in the east of the country, to St Anthony’s Church and three tourist hotels in Colombo to St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo in the west could not have come at a worse time.   

The churches were packed with devotees as Easter is the most important festival in the Christian calendar celebrated as the victory of good over evil and life over death. Young and old, rich and poor alike, mingle in churches to celebrate this festival.   

Hotels too are filled to near capacity with merry-makers celebrating the festival. And it was in this milieu or environment that suicide bombers brought their hate-filled messages of death 
and destruction.   

The President who was out of the country when the attacks took place, belatedly claimed the information was withheld from him too

An international terror group known as the Islamic State of Syria, Iraq and the Levant, Daesh or SIS, claimed the attacks on three churches and three hotels in which around 300 persons including 45 children were killed and over 500 others were injured. The attack itself was carried out by radicalised or brain-washed members of the Lankan Muslim community.   

The ISIS, which grew out of the invasion of Iraq by the US and Western countries, see Christians and Western Europeans as the enemies of the Islamic people and its (ISIS) aim of setting up a worldwide caliphate.   

The group refers to Western armed forces occupying Muslim countries from Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria as ‘Crusader invaders’.

Therefore, not entirely surprisingly, the targets of the Easter Sunday attack while clearly against Christians and foreigners, irrespective of their race or ethnicity the aim was to sow terror.   
But why Sri Lanka? Sri Lanka has, after all, has continuously been supportive of the cause of the Palestinian people.

In the more recent past, however, the Muslim community faced a series of attacks from nationalist sections among the Sri Lankan community.   

A number of Muslim places of worship ranging from Dambulla in the north-central province to the capital city of Colombo to Ahangama in the south were attacked. Members of the community were killed, and Muslim owned business places and homes were attacked.   

Sadly, even though many years have passed since these events took place, the majority of attackers involved in the hate-attacks on the community, though identified, still remain at large.   
The forces of the State have as yet failed to bring a majority of the wrongdoers to book.

What is often forgotten is that a single attack on even one individual leads to the radicalisation of entire communities as we saw happen with the Tamil community over three decades ago.   
Hate breeds hate and the community under attack no doubt proved a fertile breeding ground for the radicalisation of many young men and women in that community.   

What politicians in the country have failed to learn is that unless wrong-doers are brought to justice immediately, the section of the citizenry sometimes tends to mete out their own brand of justice.

Perhaps because of lessons learned from the long-drawn Sinhala-Tamil ethnic crisis, Sri Lanka’s leadership -political, civic and religious- have united to condemn the actions of terrorists rather than blame a particular community for the hate-filled actions, which resulted in multiple hundreds being killed in the suicide bombings, the country was spared a repetition of mayhem which erupted in July 1983.   

The present Government, which was voted into power in the hope that justice would be meted out to all sections of the populace equally, has totally failed the people in this regard.   

Justice to minority communities still remains a distant dream.

Murderers of prominent journalists roam the country with impunity.   

The cancer of corruption has insidiously entered every aspect of life, from children seeking entry into schools to seeking employment, to even approaching officials charged with keeping the law; it all depends on whom one knows or the richer one commands.   

What is worse is that today, the very Government of the country is at war with itself. The stand-off between the President and the Prime Minister continues. Even as the worst disaster hits the country the political instability continues.   

The political leadership is playing a blame game -the Prime Minister claiming he was not aware of intelligence reports which indicated the Easter Sunday attack was imminent -as he was not invited to Security Council meetings by the President. The President who was out of the country when the attacks took place, belatedly claimed the information was withheld from him too.   

Party political forces seem to be more interested in gaining political mileage from the disaster rather than seeking a way to stop international terrorism further creeping into the country.   

It is time our political leaders, if they have not read Aesop’s fables as yet, or if they have already read it, do a re-read of Aesop’s ‘Bundle of Sticks’ and get together to get this country out of the morass into which they have dumped it.