Sri Lanka will mark its fifth Easter since the harrowing April 21, 2019, jihadist suicide bombings that killed 275 people and injured dozens of others, deliberately targeting crowded churches and popular hotel brunch spots.
Pope Francis welcomed a large assembly of Sri Lankan pilgrims in the Vatican on Monday to commemorate the 2019 Islamic State Easter Sunday massacre that claimed the lives of over 350 people.
Actor Jehan Appuhami announced that he would carry a cross on a three-day trek to the presidential offices in Sri Lanka demanding justice for the victims of the 2019 Easter bombings.
Sunday in Sri Lanka will mark the third Easter since Islamic State-affiliated jihadists bombed three churches and three Christian-frequented hotels on the holiest holiday in Christianity, killing over 200 people and injuring hundreds of others.
The government of Sri Lanka announced this weekend it would implement a nationwide ban on burqas, Islamic coverings for women that shield the entire face, arguing the garment presents “national security” risks.
Tuesday marked one year since the bombing of three churches and three hotels serving Easter brunch in Sri Lanka, claimed by Islamic State sympathizers and resulting in hundreds of deaths and severe injuries.
Father Neville Fernando, TOR, froze. He was standing in the middle of St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday, in the immediate aftermath of a jihadist attack that would kill over 250 people and injure 500 others in three churches and three hotels in the Colombo area.
The Sri Lankan cabinet on Wednesday approved harsh new laws against “fake news,” specifying five-year prison terms and fines of up to one million rupees (about $5700.)
Every Muslim minister and deputy minister in Sri Lanka’s government resigned on Monday following the resignation of two governors in response to a Buddhist monk’s hunger strike calling for Muslim officials to step down.
The head of Sri Lanka’s State Intelligence Service (SIS) Sisira Mendis told that nation’s legislature on Wednesday that government intelligence and defense officials were aware of a jihadist plot to kill Christians on Easter Sunday, but no one did anything to prepare for it.
Members of a Marxist opposition party in Sri Lanka filed a motion of no confidence against the entire government of President Maithripala Sirisena on Tuesday condemning its inability to prevent the Easter Sunday jihadist attacks that killed over 250 people.
Authorities continued imposing curfews Wednesday night in Sri Lanka after a wave of largely Sinhalese Buddhist led vandalism on Muslim businesses and mosques prompted a nationwide law enforcement effort to protect the nation’s Muslim minority.
A local outlet in Sri Lanka published a video Monday, which purportedly shows Sri Lankan security forces colluding with mobs perpetrating violence against Muslims.
Churches in two of the cities in Sri Lanka targeted by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)-linked attack that killed and wounded hundreds of Christians on Easter opened their doors to worshippers this Sunday under tight security measures, more than 20 days after the rampage.
Sri Lankan police struggled to keep up this weekend with a series of mob attacks on mosques, the latest occurring Monday, in retaliation for a series of suicide bombings on Easter that killed over 350 people. The assailants are believed to belong to the country’s Buddhist majority.
Evangelical Christians from Sri Lanka’s Zion Church, which was bombed by jihadists on Easter, gathered for worship Sunday, chanting folr Jesus to “save us from the Satans who are trying to destroy our nation.”
Catholics in Sri Lanka faced another Sunday with no public worship as the Church ruled that no Masses should be celebrated to avoid the risk of more terror attacks.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, long rumored to have been killed during the collapse of his “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, released a new video on Monday in which he praised the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka as well as jihadis in Burkina Faso and Mali. It was the first confirmed video appearance by Baghdadi since the summer of 2014.
The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has called on the government to ramp up security measures against Islamic extremists “as if on war footing” following the jihadist Easter massacre.
Sri Lanka’s highest-ranking Catholic leader condemned the Easter jihadist attacks as “an insult to humanity” at a private Mass attended by the nation’s president and prime minister Sunday.
Sri Lanka deployed thousands of security forces on Friday to protect mosques and other worshipping centers across the island nation against potential retaliatory violence in the wake of the jihadi suicide bombings against Christians on Easter Sunday.
Sri Lankan authorities this week reportedly identified two sons and a daughter-in-law of a local millionaire spice trader as some of the jihadis involved in the wave of suicide bombings that targeted Christians on Easter Sunday, killing and injuring hundreds.
Sri Lanka’s highest-ranking Catholic prelate said Wednesday that the decision by national intelligence officials to conceal information about the possibility of a terrorist attack is “extremely serious,” since “it means that the massacre could have been avoided.”
The author of a major study on worldwide Christian persecution said that the tragedy of the recent slaughter of Christians in Sri Lanka is how unsurprising it is.
Deadly Easter suicide bombings targeting Christians in Sri Lanka were an attack on people of “all faiths”, according to EU Foreign Affairs chief Federica Mogherini.
Sri Lanka may be considering joining a growing number of governments in banning the burqa, an Islamic head covering that leaves no part of a woman’s body visible, local media reported Tuesday in the aftermath of the series of suspected jihadist bombings targeting Christians on Easter Sunday.
