This month, Sri Lanka will mark a decade of peace after 26 years of
civil war between the Sinhalese-majority state and a Tamil separatist
movement. But hopes of celebrating that calm were shattered last month
on Easter Sunday when suicide bombers claimed by the Islamic State targeted
Christian churches and luxury hotels, killing at least 250 people and
weaving Sri Lanka into a web of global terrorism.
Tensions remained high on Monday,
more than two weeks after the attacks, as Sri Lanka deployed additional
troops to Negombo, one of the sites of the Easter bombings, after
clashes the day before between Muslims and Sinhalese.
“Well, it was very nice for us to have 10 years of relative freedom and
safety,” said M.A. Sumanthiran, a prominent legislator and human rights
lawyer. “Now it’s back to normal in Sri Lanka. We have a new enemy but
the same hate.”
Mr. Sumanthiran was sitting in his study in the capital, Colombo,
effectively a hostage in his own home. Downstairs, armed guards were on
alert. Months ago, military intelligence had warned that resurgent Tamil
separatists wanted his assassination. Last week, they cautioned that
Muslim militants also had him in their sights.
Priests and police officers outside St. Anthony’s Church in Colombo, one of the sites of the Easter Sunday bombings.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
Friends and relatives consoled a boy at the burial of three members of his family who died in the Easter Sunday bomb blast at St. Sebastian Church in Negombo.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
Since independence in 1948, one Sri Lankan president and one prime
minister have been assassinated. Sri Lankan extremists have also killed
dozens of local politicians and a former prime minister of India.
In the wake of last month’s bombings, in which repeated warnings were ignored that militants were planning attacks, some Sri Lankans have called for the return of the security state that brought an end to war in 2009. Yet that peace came at the cost of up to 40,000 Tamil lives, according to the United Nations.
A few days after the Easter attacks, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the defense
chief who led that deadly final push against Tamil separatists,
announced that he was running for president in elections set for later
this year, on a get-tough-again platform.
Mr. Sumanthiran, a Christian Tamil, is adamant that more soldiers and
the return of a feared military intelligence network are the last thing
Sri Lanka needs. Mr. Rajapaksa, who is considered the front-runner in
the race, is being accused of crimes against humanity in a California court.
“The heavy hand of the security state will breed extremism of all
kinds,” Mr. Sumanthiran said. “Our problem is that, fundamentally,
minority rights, religious or ethnic, are treated with disrespect and
with force by the government. Until we resolve this, Sri Lanka will be
stained in blood.”
Worshipers prayed in a mosque that a Buddhist mob ransacked and set alight along with neighboring Muslim shops in Kandy last year.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
The destroyed home of Abdul Basith Samsudeen, who died when a Buddhist mob attacked and set fire to it in Kandy last year.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
Traveling through Sri Lanka is like venturing into a kaleidoscope, each piece shifting and separate.
A Buddhist heartland, with verdant hills and saffron-robed monks, gives
way to neighborhoods of mosques and men in prayer caps. Later, along the
same road, comes a Hindu village, with its diversity of gods decorating
homes.
Occasionally, a cross juts out from a Roman Catholic or Protestant church or the windshield of a trishaw driver.
The Easter bombings may have been particularly bloody, but the targeting
of places of worship in this multiethnic, multifaith nation is not new.
In 1998, Tamil separatists attacked one of the world’s holiest sites,
the temple in central Sri Lanka where a relic believed to be the
Buddha’s tooth is kept. That temple was also targeted in 1989 by
communist extremists.
Over the course of the civil war between insurgents from the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sinhalese-majority state, the military
descended upon Christian churches and Hindu temples where Tamils had
sought refuge. The Tamil Tigers responded by massacring dozens of
Buddhist monks. In 1990, they infiltrated evening prayers at two
mosques, killing more than 100 Muslims who were considered government
collaborators.
Sri Lanka cannot be divided neatly by race, faith or language. The
population is more than 70 percent Sinhalese; most are Buddhists, a
minority is Christian. Around 10 percent of the country is Tamil,
largely Hindu and Christian. Muslims occupy another 10 percent and are
considered a distinct ethnicity even though many speak Tamil.
Novice monks studying with Abbot Kolonnawe Narada Thero, right, at Sangaraja Temple in Colombo.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
Security officers screening visitors at the Temple of the Tooth Relic.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
Since the war’s end, dozens of mosques and churches have been attacked
by Sinhalese mobs. Last year, at least one Muslim was killed in violence
near the city of Kandy, where the Temple of the Tooth Relic is. This
year, on Palm Sunday, a week before the Easter bombings, Sinhalese
pelted stones at a center run by the Methodist church.
Sinhalese enjoy numerical superiority in Sri Lanka, but some accuse a
growing evangelical Christian movement of stealing souls. They also
claim that minority Muslims and Hindus have a plan to overwhelm the
island by fecundity.
“I will be accused of racism, but I know what they want is a Muslim Sri
Lanka,” said Dilanthe Withanage, a former spokesman for Bodu Bala Sena,
the most influential Buddhist nationalist group. “By 2040, they will
have a majority of the population and they will buy Sinhalese
politicians to make the country run by Shariah law.”
Demographics are unlikely to prove Mr. Withanage correct. But the
feeling that the Sinhalese are an embattled majority has meant that
minorities receive less-than-equal treatment from the government, which
in turn fosters resentment. For years, the nation’s Hindus were governed
by the Buddhism ministry. Another ministry governs tourism, wildlife
and Christian affairs.
“Sinhalese people don’t consider us real Sri Lankans, so maybe I can
understand when Muslims are attracted by Islamic State, which welcomes
them into a brotherhood,” said M.M. Moinudeen, an imam from the eastern
city of Batticaloa, the site of one of the Easter bombings.
Such is the power of the Buddhist political establishment that when John
Amaratunga, the minister of tourism, wildlife and Christian religious
affairs, made an offhand comment in an interview about the
organizational differences between Buddhism and Catholicism, aides spent
10 minutes explaining why publishing the remark could prove disastrous
for communal relations.
At the Sri Manika Vinayagar Hindu Temple in Colombo, Ganeshan, a textile
merchant who goes by one name, eyed the soldiers who have guarded the
entrance since the Easter bombings. In the early days of Sri Lanka’s
civil war, as pogroms against Tamils forced entire villages to flee,
this temple housed a makeshift camp for refugees. Mr. Ganeshan was one
of them.
A prayer ceremony at Sri Manika Vinayagar Hindu Temple in Colombo.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
Soldiers have guarded the entrance of the Sri Manika Vinayagar temple since the Easter bombings.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
“People talk with their tongues about peace, but their hearts are not in
it, because as long as one community wants to rule another, it will not
stop,” he said. “For all of us, even if this attack was Muslims against
Christians, we live in fear because it could always go back again.”
But in another neighborhood of Colombo, amid houses with Arabic prayers
over their doors and others with altars to Christian saints, stood a
Bodhi tree and the Buddhist temple that grew around it. Kolonnawe Narada
Thero, the temple abbot, said anyone was welcome. He was not scared of
Buddhist extremists, he said.
After an evangelical Christian church and school were forced out of
nearby premises in 2011, he welcomed the Christians and their students
into his compound. Today, children supported by the Christian charity
still study on temple grounds.
“If you have a garden and only have roses, it will not be as beautiful
as if you have lots of different flowers,” the abbot said. “In Sri
Lanka, if you only have one culture or religion, you lose the diversity,
the beauty.”
