Blake Foreshadows New American Approach to Sri Lanka … and the Rajapaksa Combo

Daya Gamage, in Asian Tribune, 12 May 2019, with this title “Robert Blake indicates Washington’s new approach to Sri Lanka”

Robert O’Blake, former (2006-2009) American ambassador to Sri Lanka and onetime assistant secretary for South and Central Asian Bureau (2009-2012) of the US Department of State indicated how Washington would approach Sri Lanka having seen the deteriorating security situation in this South Asian nation – which could affect Washington’s military design in the Indo-Pacific region – while assessing the rapidly changing political environment possibly favoring the return of the Rajapaksas.

Intolerance. The Deep Currents within Sri Lanka

This last week  i received two emails, one from a friend in Canada and another from a well-placed senior person in Colombo, which, quite independently, touched on Ahmaddiya, Christian and Rohingya refugees brought to the island as transit refugees by UNHCR and parked in the western coastal areas. Bishop Dhiloraj Canagasabey’s recent public address confirmed the thrust of these two emails. The implications are disheartening and should fore all of us Lankans to review our recent history and its shortcomings.

ONE: Email Note from Canada, 15 May 2019

Hello Michael,  The following might be of interest to you as a social scientist. (A) I read the story (in the link below) at Google News – which sends me stories on SL to my inbox, This is interesting as I was unaware that SL had “foreign” refugees. There were rumours that Rishad Badudeen (Minister – Puttalam) was settling some Bangladeshis in Wilpattu.

Building Sri Lankan Identity is Our Duty in the Midst of this Failure — The Anglican Bishop of Colombo

An ADDRESS by the Bishop of Colombo, Anglican Diocese,

“… …. do not demonize the entire Muslim community because of the sins of a few warped minds”

Media Briefing on current situation in the country by the Bishop of Colombo, Diocese of Colombo … viz. Dhiloraj Canagasabey

The Easter Sunday Killings: Profound Protests

ONE: From the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, dated 24th April 2010, https://hcef.org/790814456-a-statement-from-the-patriarchs-and-heads-of-church-in-jerusalem-on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-sri-lanka-on-easter-day

Sheridan’s Concise Overview of Security Failures and the Islamic Extremist Threat in Sri Lanka … and This World

Greg Sheridan, in Weekend Australian, 27/28 April 2019, where the title is “Eternal vigilance is the price of keeping Islamist terror at bay”…. with highlighting emphasis added by The Editor

India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, tried for two years to tell its Sri Lankan colleagues they faced a growing threat of Islamist terrorism. But the Colombo authorities weren’t interested. If there was any threat, they believed it came from the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But the Tamil Tiger threat ended 10 years ago.

We don’t have a problem with our Muslims, the Sri Lankans insisted. By and large they were right about their Muslims. But out of maybe two million Sri Lankan Muslims, there was a problem with at least a couple of hundred, of whom a dozen or so became hard-boiled terrorists. Nine became suicide bombers, 10 if you count the bomb that one suspect detonated as police approached her home. That was more than enough. A Muslim man prays while perched on the roof of a mosque to spot possible hostile people during Friday prayers in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 26. Picture: AP

Double Standards among Liberals in the West: No RAGE from Sri Lankan Horrors in Contrast with Reaction to Christchurch

Brendan O’Neill, in Weekend Australian, 27 April 2019, with this title “Hierarchy of Victimhood: The slaughter of Christians elicits grief not outrage “

Where is the anger over the apocalyptic barbarism visited upon Christians in Sri Lanka? Where is the fury? Where are the tweets and blog posts and viral videos offering solidarity to Christians and slamming the bombers as a members of a global fascistic movement? Such wrath has been notable by its absence, or at least its rarity, in the aftermath of the extremist slaughter that killed at least 253 people, the majority of them Christians marking the resurrection of Christ at Easter Sunday ­services.

Yes, there has been sorrow. And there has been some very strong media coverage. People want to know the stories of those who were killed, and feel the pain of the those they left behind. But rage? There has been very little.

A woman is overcome with grief during a funeral for a victim of the Easter Sunday attack on St Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka. Picture: Getty Images

Terrorism in Sri Lanka: Some Threads in Social Media …. with Analytic Reflections

Sanjana Hattotuwa, in Sunday Island, 28 April 2019, where the title is “It doesn’t make sense”
-Naren Hattotuwa – Easter Sunday.” … with highlighting emphasis being the work of The Editor, Thuppahi

A Scene from Christchurch … and Sri Lanka

On Monday, my 12-year-old son learnt his classmate had passed away at the Intensive Care Unit, a victim of one of the blasts in Colombo. My son’s mother and I grew up in the long shadow of the Black July anti-Tamil pogrom and the UNP-JVP violence in the late 80s. For many in our generation and older, there is a normalization of violence. This is often confused with getting used to or accepting violence.

After the Christchurch massacre in March, many Kiwis trying to get to grips with the scale of the violence unthinkingly said that since I came from Sri Lanka, I was far more used to dealing with terrorism. I suppose that’s in a way true. Mundane things done every day have their own logic and reason that no one from outside cycles of violence would understand. In Kabul, a city where so much is wrong and getting worse, I feel completely at home amidst the detours, convoys, checkpoints, occasional explosion, news of imminent attacks and sporadic gunfire – or the sound of an engine back-firing shrugged off as gunfire, obviously the lesser evil there. The assumption that the more time one spends with it, the greater the ease in dealing with terrorism is, however, untrue.