The New Wings activists take part in a silent protest demanding justice of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attack, in Colombo on April 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Sri Lanka marks on April 21 five years since Islamist bombers slaughtered 279 people in the island’s deadliest suicide attack, but grieving families say they are still waiting for justice.

Government employee Saman Sirimanna, 59, and his wife Sriyani, 57, lost their two children when a suicide bomber stormed into St. Anthony’s church in the capital Colombo on Easter Day 2019.

It was part of a wave of attacks that included three luxury hotels and two other churches in the majority Buddhist nation.

Mr. Sirimanna said his 19-year-old son and 22-year-old daughter had gone to “seek blessings” for good exam results.

“My loss is irreplaceable”, Mr. Sirimanna told AFP, with tears in his eyes. “My children will never return.”

Among the dead were 45 foreigners, including tourists visiting the island a decade after the end of a brutal civil war.

Mr. Sirimanna is bitter over delays in court proceedings and a dragging investigation into the bombings.

A court last year ruled that Sri Lanka’s ex-president and top officials had failed to heed urgent warnings that the attacks were imminent.

‘Hope’ for justice

An inquiry into the bombings found the attacks were the work of a homegrown jihadist group that declared an affiliation with the Islamic State group.

But survivors and bereaved families are demanding a proper investigation into claims of links between the bombers and Sri Lankan intelligence officials.

“I am the first person who filed legal action,” Mr. Sirimanna said. “I went to court because the authorities did not carry out their responsibilities.”

Evidence tendered during a civil case brought by Mr. Sirimanna and other relatives of the dead showed that Indian intelligence officials warned Colombo of the attack more than two weeks earlier.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that top officials, including then-president Maithripala Sirisena, had been negligent in failing to prevent the bombings. Mr. Sirisena was in Singapore on the day of the attacks.

It ordered the defendants to pay 310 million rupees ($1 million) in compensation to victims and relatives.

But the ruling has yet to be fully implemented as Mr. Sirisena has appealed the order.

“The court gave them six months to pay — they didn’t,” Mr. Sirimanna said, noting the next hearing in the case is scheduled for July.

“We hope at least then there will be some justice,” he added.

‘Hanging on to the Lord’

Successive governments have failed to probe media claims that Suresh Sallay, a top military intelligence official linked to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had connections with the bombers.

Mr. Rajapaksa, a retired army officer, won a landslide presidential election seven months after the attacks, campaigning on a pledge to keep Sri Lanka safe.

He appointed Mr. Sallay as head of Sri Lanka’s main intelligence agency.

Mr. Rajapaksa was ousted around two years ago when protesters stormed his compound during an unprecedented economic crisis.

His successor, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, announced a probe into Mr. Sallay’s relationship with the attackers last September.

But there has been no public announcement of its progress — and the intelligence chief remains in his role.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged an independent investigation with international help to establish the “full circumstances” of the bombings.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the leader of the Catholic church in Sri Lanka, said the lack of a credible investigation had shaken people’s trust in the government.

“We have been critical of government people and various authorities over and over again, but no positive response has come,” he told AFP.

“We are now hanging on to the Lord to settle this matter in order to find out what really happened, pleading with him to take us from ignorance to knowledge.”

Mr. Ranjith will attend a remembrance service for the victims at St. Sebastian’s church on Sunday, one of the places attacked in 2019.

“We are not interested in punishing anybody, but we are interested to know why somebody did that to these people,” he said. “They have a right to know.”

A view of Katchatheevu in Sri Lanka. File
| Photo Credit: L. BALACHANDAR

The Sri Lankan government is yet to comment on the recent remarks by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Katchatheevu, but the island nation’s media took a critical view of the development, while fishermen’s associations urged Sri Lankan authorities to take up the issue of bottom trawling more vocally with the Indian government.

The Colombo-based English newspaper Daily Mirror, in its editorial on Tuesday, noted: “Sadly, even the seemingly unflappable Indian External Affairs Minister – Jaishankar – has dropped all pretence of statesmanship and has joined hands with his premier to rouse communal feelings in the hope of gaining a few votes in Tamil Nadu.” “Lanka desires to be left to its own devices away from India’s internal politics,” it said.

The editorial was responding to Mr. Modi’s claim — and Dr. Jaishankar’s subsequent media statement which sought to back it — that the Congress party “callously gave away” Katchatheevu to Sri Lanka. In its editorial titled ‘Katchatheevu was not India’s to ‘give away’’, business newspaper Daily Financial Times termed their remarks “a distortion of the facts, a dog whistle to South Indian nationalism and a dangerous and unnecessary provocation of a friendly neighbour that could have serious repercussions”.

“The constant provocative claims on Sri Lankan territory, especially from the highest echelons of power in India, would only force our country to seek security guarantees elsewhere. Having learnt the art of diplomacy from Ashoka and strategy from Kautilya, it would be tragic for all concerned if Sri Lanka needs to apply the foreign policy theory of Rajamandala to find ‘friends’ elsewhere to protect itself against a ‘near foe’,” the newspaper’s editorial observed.

Meanwhile, the Indian leaders’ reference to Katchatheevu in the context of frequent arrests of Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan waters has also drawn attention among those familiar with the complex and long-persisting fisheries conflict in the Palk Strait.

Both, regional and national parties in India have often conflated the fisheries conflict and the ceding of Katchatheevu, located almost equidistant from the coasts of northern Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. Politicians have suggested that had Katchatheevu remained in India’s territory, the fishermen from Tamil Nadu would not face arrest by Sri Lankan authorities.

Leaders of fishermen’s groups in northern Sri Lanka said linking the two issues was “insincere”. Further, it distorts the persisting problem of Indian boats fishing along Sri Lanka’s coastline, using the destructive bottom trawling method that scoops out all marine organisms. The practice severely affected the livelihoods of northern Sri Lankan fisher folk, who are struggling to recover from the civil war.

Annalingam Annarasa, northern coordinator of an island-wide federation of fishermen’s organisations, said the recent remarks exposed the Indian leaders who “are simply politicising” the issue at the cost of the livelihoods of fisher folk in both countries. “Instead of remaining silent, the Sri Lankan government should resist any attempt to link the resolved matter of Katchatheevu to the unresolved question of bottom-trawling by Indian fishermen in our seas. They must take necessary steps to solve the real problem,” he told The Hindu.

Further, GPS evidence has on several occasions made clear that the fishermen from Tamil Nadu sailed well past Katchatheevu, right up to Sri Lanka’s coastline. Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil fishermen have, in several such instances, recorded visuals showing Indian fishing boats close to their shores.

“If the Indian fishermen’s arrests were about Katchatheevu, then how do we explain their fishing activity in Karainagar (north of Kayts) and Mullaitivu that is even further away?” Mr. Annarasa asked. “They are raking up the Katchatheevu issue just in time for polls, instead of finding a solution to this serious problem. Once the politicians come to power, they will once again forget our plight,” he said.

A view of Katchatheevu in Sri Lanka.
| Photo Credit: L. Balachandar

Sri Lanka’s Cabinet has not discussed the Katchatheevu issue so far as it was never raised, a government spokesman said in Colombo on April 2, after India’s ruling BJP blamed the Congress for ceding the tiny island to Colombo in 1974.

“The Cabinet did not discuss it as it was never raised,” Bandula Gunawardena, the Cabinet spokesman and minister of information told reporters here today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday cited a media report to assert that new facts reveal that the Congress “callously” gave away Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka.

Also Read | Katchatheevu | What is the controversy all about?

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also slammed the Congress party and ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) over the Katchchatheevu island issue.

On Monday, Jaishankar claimed that prime ministers from the Congress displayed indifference about Katchatheevu island as if they did not care and gave away Indian fishermen’s rights despite legal views to the contrary.

Citing details of the agreements between India and Sri Lanka first in 1974 and then in 1976, he said a recurring theme is the indifference shown by the central government and prime ministers of the day about the territory of India.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram has said that Katchatheevu was ceded to Sri Lanka to maintain good relations and to save the lives of lakhs of Tamils.

Mr. Chidambaram, a former Union Home Minister, wondered why the Prime Minister was raking up an issue that was settled in 1974.

That year, the Indira Gandhi government, to maintain good relations with Sri Lanka and to help lakhs and lakhs of Tamils there, negotiated with the island nation’s government.

Following negotiations, a settlement was made on Katchatheevu, a very small island of about 1.9 sq km, and India acknowledged Katchatheevu as belonging to Sri Lanka, he said.

In return, six lakh Tamils were allowed to come to India.

“They have come here, their families are here, they have got full freedom, they are breathing free air. Their children and grandchildren are here. The issue was closed 50 years ago,” Mr. Chidambaram said.

A file photo of Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe
| Photo Credit: AP

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on March 22 released 234 acres of land, previously held by the Jaffna Security Forces Headquarters, to farmers in the area, a statement said.

Jaffna is a Tamil-dominated capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.

The President’s Media Division of Sri Lanka (PMD) said in a post on X: “President Ranil Wickremesinghe released 234 acres of land which were previously held by the Jaffna Security Forces Headquarters, to farmers for cultivation purposes in 5 Grama Niladhari Divisions in Jaffna.”

These plots of land were released to farmers across five Grama Niladhari Divisions in Jaffna for cultivation purposes, The Morning News website reported.

Under the Urumaya national programme, aimed at distributing two million freehold deeds to the deserving public, Mr. Wickremesinghe symbolically presented the deeds, benefiting 408 individuals at a ceremony held in Jaffna’s Oddakapulam.

Also read: Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and the downfall of LTTE

Jaffna holds great significance as it was the region where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader V. Prabhakaran.

The region has lacked economic development and the Sri Lankan leaders have said they are committed to the development of the Tamil-dominated Northern and Eastern provinces of the island nation.

Chinese research ship Shiyan 6 is seen berthed at Colombo harbor, Sri Lanka, on October 26, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

Chinese research vessel Shiyan 6, which arrived in Colombo last week amid concerns raised by India and the United States, is set to begin its two-day research off the Sri Lankan coast today, Sri Lankan authorities said.

The research will be pursued off Sri Lanka’s western coast, and in collaboration with Sri Lanka’s National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA) and the University of Ruhuna, according to a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombo. Asked about the nature of research, the spokesperson told The Hindu: “It is marine scientific research.” The Ministry had earlier said the vessel was at the Colombo port for “replenishment”.

Research ship Shiyan 6 was added to China’s fleet of marine research vessels in December 2020. Said to be the country’s first scientific research vessel focusing on geophysical exploration, it is scheduled to operate at sea for about 80 days, with 13 research teams onboard pursuing 28 scientific research projects across 12,000 nautical miles, the state-run China Global Television Network reported in September.

Both, India and the US raised concern over the vessel’s visit, as the two countries had done in the past, around earlier visits of Chinese vessels. Sri Lankan media reported that the issue also came up in talks held by President Ranil Wickremesinghe in Beijing earlier this month.  

In September this year, ‘INS Delhi’, India’s first indigenously built destroyer undertook a goodwill visit to Sri Lanka. Last week, ‘ROKS Gwanggaeto the Great’ of the Korean Navy and more recently, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) destroyer AKEBONO (DD 108) arrived at the Trincomalee harbour, located on Sri Lanka’s north-eastern coast, on an official visit.

Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The escalating tensions in Gaza have come under sharp focus in Sri Lanka, an island nation that is struggling to get out of its own devastating civil war, nearly 15 years after it ended.

While President Ranil Wickremesinghe recently called for a “four-state” solution involving Israel, Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon, to resolve the crisis, he also shared his concerns with caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Tuesday. The regional leaders are currently in China to attend the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

According to an update posted by the Pakistani Prime Minister’s office on social media platform X, the two leaders expressed “deep concern at the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza caused by the ongoing Israeli attacks. They called for “immediate cessation of hostilities by Israel; establishment of a humanitarian corridor to provide aid to the besieged people of Gaza; and a two-state solution, resulting in the establishment of a viable and contiguous Palestinian State with pre-1967 borders and Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital”, the post said.

Expressing solidarity

Meanwhile, key political actors from different parties in Sri Lanka have voiced concern on the ongoing violence.

Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa has called for an urgent parliamentary debate on the issue, while observing that “state terrorism” was leading to “hundreds of deaths”. On Wednesday, Mr. Premadasa presented a motion urging the House to call upon the United Nations to convene its Security Council to end the ongoing conflict. Terming the hospital bombing in Gaza a “massacre”, he urged the permanent members of the UN to take necessary measures to stop the “ongoing terrorism and state terrorism”.

The Gaza hospital bombing comes days before Sri Lanka’s Tamils, who bore the brunt of island’s long civil war, commemorate the brutal attack on the Jaffna teaching hospital in 1987 by members of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). Some 70 civilians, including 21 medical personnel, were killed on October 21 and 22, 1987.

Prominent leaders have also visited the Palestinian Embassy in Colombo to express solidarity. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa emphasised the urgency of peace in his recent meeting with the Palestinian Ambassador, Mr. Rajapaksa’s office said. “I have consistently supported the Palestinian cause as the Founder and President of the Sri Lanka Society for Solidarity with Palestine. War is never a solution,” said Mr. Rajapaksa, whose government is accused of committing grave human rights violations during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war — fought between the armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — which claimed at least 40,000 civilian lives. He has consistently denied the allegations, contending that his forces’ actions were part of a “humanitarian operation”.

On Wednesday, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Member of Parliament and leader of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) met the Palestinian Ambassador in Colombo to express solidarity. He sought the UN’s “fair intervention” and implementation of the two-state solution. Civic activists and rights defenders in Sri Lanka have also been organising protests in solidarity with Palestine over the last few days.

Sri Lanka is far from reconciling the ethnic conflict even after 14 years since the end of the country’s civil war.
| Photo Credit: AFP

India on Tuesday said the progress made by Sri Lanka, on its commitment to fulfill the Tamils’ aspirations, was “inadequate” and urged the island nation to “work meaningfully” to keep its promises.

“We have taken note of reaffirmation by the Government of Sri Lanka on implementation of its commitments. However, progress on the same is inadequate and we urge the Government of Sri Lanka to work meaningfully towards early implementation of its commitments to ensure that the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all its citizens are fully protected,” India’s representative told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva at its ongoing 54^th session.  The position was consistent with New Delhi’s remarks last year, that voiced concern over the “lack of measurable progress”.

Also Read | Sri Lanka’s northern Tamils sceptical ahead of ‘another Geneva session’

Unresolved conflict

India’s intervention at the ‘Interactive Dialogue’, comes in the wake of the latest report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on ‘Promoting reconciliation, accountability, and human rights in Sri Lanka’. Fourteen years after the civil war ended, Sri Lanka is far from reconciling the ethnic conflict that triggered it.

If the country’s past is troubled, its present is marred by last year’s devastating financial meltdown that has left over half its population vulnerable. The High Commissioner’s office sought to highlight both the challenges. Addressing the Council on Monday, Nada Al-Nashif, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights said one year after the “remarkable protest movement” — the Janatha Aragalaya that ousted the Rajapaksas as the island’s economy crashed dramatically — demanding deep political and democratic reforms, the transformation “has still not materialised”.  Pointing to soaring poverty levels and the enduring impact of the crisis, she said an estimated 37% of households faced acute food insecurity.

Also Read | Top U.N. official flags ‘accountability deficit’ in Sri Lanka 

Further, the top UN official underscored the limits placed on citizen’s political participation and free expression, owing to the delays in holding local government elections, and in reconstituting Provincial Councils under the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution.  

India, too, reiterated its position on power devolution, citing its “two guiding principles” of support to the aspirations of Tamils for equality, justice, dignity, and peace; and to the unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty of Sri Lanka. “We hope that the Government of Sri Lanka will fulfill the aspirations of Tamils for equality, justice and peace and its commitment to implement the Thirteenth Amendment and conduct Provincial Council Elections to ensure a life of respect and dignity for Tamils in Sri Lanka,” the Indian diplomat said.   

The UN official also highlighted escalating tensions in the island’s north and east, due to land acquisition “for expansion of military installations, Buddhist heritage conservation at Hindu or Muslim sites, and forestry protection.

Also Read Ground Zero: The slippery slope to the Kurunthurmalai hilltop

At the ongoing session, the Council will not vote on a Sri Lanka resolution, but is reviewing the island’s own commitments. While the High Commissioner’s report said it “recognises” the Sri Lankan government’s initiatives in regard to truth-seeking and reconciliation, it stressed that “urgent confidence building steps” are needed for “genuine reconciliation and transitional justice process” to succeed. The Sri Lankan government rejected the report, and termed earlier resolutions of the Council “intrusive and polarising”.