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Easter attack investigations must be credible and fair
View(s):One year has passed since the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks which resulted in the death of nearly 270 people and injured more than 600. The dastardly attacks impacted numerous families whose members were the victims of the most horrendous crimes ever committed in the country.
While the entire country is grieved and bewildered by what happened on that fateful day, there remain many questions that have yet to be answered with regard to who or what was behind these attacks.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has spoken about the need to identify those behind the attacks and has often hinted at the possibility of a hidden international hand being behind this attack on worshippers in three churches as well as on three luxury hotels.
Soon after the Easter Sunday attack Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith played a big part in stemming the understandable anger of his flock at the senseless carnage inflicted on innocent people, by helping to calm them down. He absolved the Muslim community from the actions of a few of its members and paid a tribute to the Muslim religious leaders for standing in solidarity with the Christian community.
Addressing a press conference last week, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith called on the Government to investigate the Easter Sunday attacks as they were aimed at “destabilising Sri Lanka and plunging us into conflict.”
He said his community was able to control angry members of the community from retaliating against Muslims after last year’s suicide attacks on churches on Easter Sunday.
“It was hard but we were able to hold them back in the interest of the country,” he told reporters.
“We did not want to drag our country back into the era where we had thirty years of ethnic conflict,” he said referring to the civil war which engulfed the country at a tragic cost to the people.
He said some “politically motivated elements” tried to attack Muslim places of worship in the Catholic majority city of Negombo a week after the attacks but he, together with the All Ceylon Jammiyathul Ulema President Rizwe Mufthi, visited the mosques in Negombo and were able to calm both communities.
He said two weeks later, when he visited a place where the Muslim communities had been attacked, he was told that it was not the Catholic community members who had stoned the Muslims and their shops. Those acts were carried out by mobs who came from areas outside their towns.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith went on to point out the pogroms against Muslims in Minuwangoda and Kurunegala districts three weeks after the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks were carried out “by political elements who had nothing to do with the Christian community” and he called for an investigation into these attacks as well.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith went even further when he spoke at an Easter mass on TV a few days ago, and said they had forgiven the suicide bombers who were behind the attacks. He said “we offered love to the enemies who tried to destroy us” and “we forgave them.”
Looking back at the dastardly 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, what has bewildered most observers is the complete disconnection of the attackers with the rest of the Muslim community and indeed the rest of the country. With no history of tensions between the Muslims and Christians of this country, what prompted the attackers to target the Christian churches remains a mystery. What is even more puzzling is that none of the suicide bombers or their associates had at any time articulated any grievances which may have been used to justify the attacks which went beyond killing innocent worshippers and tourists, towards killing infant children.
The other aspect of the investigation which needs to be pursued is why the security forces did not take preventive action when they were forearmed with intelligence, both local and foreign, of the impending attacks. All the information in the public domain points to a security failure as opposed to intelligence failure. This is further confirmed by the fact that within a few days of the attack the police were able to carry out mopping up operations and arrest the residual elements behind the attacks.
There have been several probes into the attacks but without conclusive outcomes. A parliamentary select committee went into the Easter Sunday attacks, a presidential commission is continuing to hold hearings regarding the attacks and the CID has been conducting investigations since April 2019.
Now comes the news that the present Government is investigating whether the previous investigations had been carried out in the proper manner and have commissioned an inquiry into the previous investigations.
In the midst of the national effort to combat the COVID-19 virus comes the news that several arrests have been made with regard to the Easter Sunday attacks. In the absence of parliamentary oversight and judicial scrutiny it is baffling that arrests are being carried out in this manner when there was no such action being taken during the first four months of the Government’s assumption of office. No details of such arrests have been announced with two exceptions, that of a politician’s brother and a well-known lawyer.
The question uppermost in the minds of discerning observers is why this flurry of activity to arrest individuals in relation to the Easter Sunday attacks while in the midst of an energy sapping effort to contain COVID-19. Is this a genuine search for the truth or is it for any other collateral purpose?
While the whole country will welcome a probe which will elicit the truth and call to account those responsible for the heinous crime committed on April 21, 2019, such an effort must be by an investigation that is independent, credible and fair. Otherwise it will only invite sceptism and doubt as to its motives in the minds of the public.
(javidyusuf@gmail.com)