Sri Lanka bombings

[Sriram]

Well...while hotels etc. were also bombed, the attacks in Sri Lanka are largely seen as revenge against the Christchurch, New Zealand, attack. It appears to be targeted against Christians.

I hope this does not escalate into a series of tit for tat attacks around the world....

[Sriram]

With 359 people dead and more likely from among the 500 injured...this attack is one of the deadliest after the 9/11. It also appears to be well planned and coordinated with members across the world.

It deserves much more outrage and international condemnation than we see at present.

[ProfessorDavey]

Well...while hotels etc. were also bombed, the attacks in Sri Lanka are largely seen as revenge against the Christchurch, New Zealand, attack. It appears to be targeted against Christians.

Hmm - I'd have hoped that you might have recognised your oversight and simply accepted that the dead in the hotels are just as important as those in the churches. But sadly not.

It would appear that the attacks were aimed at targets that don't accord with extreme islamist ideologies - and while that includes churches, it also includes symbols of affluence etc including luxury hotels.

While I completely accept that bombing a church is targeting christians, I'm struggling to see how bombing hotels is.

[ProfessorDavey]

I hope this does not escalate into a series of tit for tat attacks around the world....

Absolutely.

[Roses]

Well...while hotels etc. were also bombed, the attacks in Sri Lanka are largely seen as revenge against the Christchurch, New Zealand, attack. It appears to be targeted against Christians.

I hope this does not escalate into a series of tit for tat attacks around the world....

I sincerely hope that will not be the case.

[Harrowby Hall]

I agree that all the deaths in the Sri Lanka atrocity are equally tragic but I think that Prof D may be ignoring the significance of the attack on churches.

In the first place, Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist - Christianity and Islam are two minor religions. It might be supposed that this would be an environment in which the supposed symbolism (for the attackers) would therefore be enhanced.

And the attack took place on Easter Day - for Christians this is most important day in the religious calendar.

This attack took place in a location few would think would be a target in retaliation for the Christchurch attack - it insults Buddhism as well as Christianity. The hotels were probably targetted because they likely to used by westeners (likely to be Christian).

As I said above. I agree entirely that all the deaths were tragic and to be deplored equally. It just seems to me that protagonists' targets were highly symbolic.


I also note now that shocked tutting noises seem to coming from people apparently surprised that one of the attackers was a student at a British university. Since Britain actively promotes its tertiary education to the rest of the world it can hardly be surprising that some of the students that are attracted turn out to be not very nice.

[ProfessorDavey]

This attack took place in a location few would think would be a target in retaliation for the Christchurch attack ...

I gather that security experts have dismissed the notion that these attacks were retaliation for the Christchurch attacks - on the basis that coordinated attacks of this sort take months or longer to plan so couldn't possible have been planned in the few weeks since the New Zealand attacks. The thought being that Christchurch was used as a convenient justification for something that was being planned well before March 15.

[ProfessorDavey]

Interesting list of terrorist atrocities by death-toll since 2001 on this link (scroll down):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48010697

While I suspect many are familiar to us, the levels of media coverage certainly aren't closely relate to the death toll - for example I don't think I even remember the Mogadishu truck bombing which happened just 2 years ago. I certainly can't remember the BBC news at 10 presented from the scene as happened this week with Clive Myrie in Sri Lanka.

So there certainly are terrorist attacks that gain more or less publicity in the west regardless of their death toll.

[Sriram]

Some of the prime suspects are members of a rich business family that is highly respected in the community.  I think one brother of the family and his wife blew  themselves up along with their own children, when police went to question them.

I just don't understand all this...! 

[Nearly Sane]

Some of the prime suspects are members of a rich business family that is highly respected in the community.  I think one brother of the family and his wife blew  themselves up along with their own children, when police went to question them.

I just don't understand all this...! 

Me neither. Though I'm not sure that if they had been poor it makes any more sense. One of those days when I see only the bad in the human race.

[Nearly Sane]

Interesting list of terrorist atrocities by death-toll since 2001 on this link (scroll down):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48010697

While I suspect many are familiar to us, the levels of media coverage certainly aren't closely relate to the death toll - for example I don't think I even remember the Mogadishu truck bombing which happened just 2 years ago. I certainly can't remember the BBC news at 10 presented from the scene as happened this week with Clive Myrie in Sri Lanka.

So there certainly are terrorist attacks that gain more or less publicity in the west regardless of their death toll.

I looked at the link last night and intended to comment on the list of murders this morning but that seems to have oddly disappeared from the link. I agree there are cases where there is less coverage - I don't think that applies here. It has had, quite rightly, full coverage. The idea that there was intelligence about a possible attack which wasn't passed on seems tragic, though it's not clear that it would have meant that it wouldn't have still taken place.

[Nearly Sane]

Article from Stuart Cosgrove giving a personal view

https://www.thenational.scot/news/17595468.stuart-cosgrove-when-terror-visits-the-places-and-people-you-know-and-love/?ref=twtrec

[Walter]

The British. Why? Are you claiming you are indifferent?

tbh , yes I am . Not sure why I feel this way , I'll give it some thought.

[ProfessorDavey]

I looked at the link last night and intended to comment on the list of murders this morning but that seems to have oddly disappeared from the link. I agree there are cases where there is less coverage - I don't think that applies here. It has had, quite rightly, full coverage.

Sorry I wasn't meaning to imply that the Sri Lanka bombings haven't received major coverage - I think they have and telling that yesterday the news at 10 was still lead by Clive Myrie from Sri Lanka and this morning's Times remain front page news with the front page picture.

What I meant was that there are other recent terrorist acts that have received far less coverage despite there being more deaths.

I think the coverage of Sri Lanka has been very significant in the UK and that is entirely appropriate given the appalling nature of the attacks and magnitude of the deaths in the hotels and churches.

[Nearly Sane]

Sorry I wasn't meaning to imply that the Sri Lanka bombings haven't received major coverage - I think they have and telling that yesterday the news at 10 was still lead by Clive Myrie from Sri Lanka and this morning's Times remain front page news with the front page picture.

What I meant was that there are other recent terrorist acts that have received far less coverage despite there being more deaths.

I think the coverage of Sri Lanka has been very significant in the UK and that is entirely appropriate given the appalling nature of the attacks and magnitude of the deaths in the hotels and churches.

And a sorry from me, I didn't mean to imply that you thought that the murders and maimings in Sri Lanka hadn't had appropriate coverage, rather I was using the difference between some of the other coverage to disagree with the claims from others on the the thread that the coverage here was minimal

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Sorry to come to this late. This was an unbelievably horrible atrocity that shocked many people in all Sri Lankan communities as we never thought that this kind of extremist cell could exist within the Sri Lankan Muslim community. Especially as the ringleaders seemed to be from a wealthy prominent, politically-connected Sri Lankan Muslim family.

The Muslim community in Sri Lanka had not previously been perceived as containing violent elements, especially as over the past few years they had not retaliated with violence when they had been victims of several attacks from members of the ultra-nationalist Sinahala Buddhist organisation, Bodu Bala Sena, that believes the Sinhalese people and the Buddhist religion (the majority community and religion in Sri Lanka) is under threat from the other communities in Sri Lanka. So it was especially shocking that such a murderous family had been part of an ISIS or ISIS-inspired cell embedded in Sri Lanka.

The hotel attacks killed people from all communities, including the Muslim community. My family and I have been to all the hotels either for meals or have stayed there.

Regarding the church attacks, The Sri Lankan Christian leaders were great in being quick to warn people against holding the entire Sri Lankan Muslim community responsible for the actions of a few terrorists, and appealing for calm and unity. The Sri Lankan Muslim community leaders met the Archbishop of Colombo the next day, and expressed condolences and called for the perpetrators to be severely punished.

Unfortunately, retaliatory attacks and mob violence by Sinhalese Buddhists, incited by radical Buddhist monks, against mosques and Muslim businesses did occur and resulted in curfews and suspension of all social media in parts of Sri Lanka. Though phone footage showed police and army not intervening while Muslim houses and businesses were set alight by mobs.

Firebrand Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka had previously been considered untouchable by the police despite inciting violent mob attacks, so what is good news is that a monk has finally been arrested and imprisoned.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2152088/buddhist-extremism-monk-gnanasaras-jailing-sign-sri-lankan

The situation is quite tense. Prof Rohan Gunaratna (a Sinhalese Buddhist) gave a speech on 19 May about the IS network in Sri Lanka, the IS network in the region and what institutions and people can do in response to this kind of extremism. He suggested that recruitment networks were family and radical imams recruiting from their congregation, and that IS recruit over the internet and therefore reach across a cross-section of society - poor, rich, educated and non-educated. He argues that education does not make people immune to IS ideology and that IS ideology is distinct from mainstream Muslim beliefs. He goes on to give examples of extremists in other religions, and he claims religious extremism is a product of unregulated religious institutions and unfettered religious freedom.
 
https://youtu.be/lvSaRpYlbSk

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Sorry - seems my info was out of date. On May 23 2019, the extremist Buddhist monk and General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena (extremist Buddhist nationalist organisation),  Galagodaththe Gnanasara Thero, received a Presidential pardon, and was released from Welikada prison.

https://groundviews.org/2019/05/24/on-the-presidential-pardon-reactions-to-gnanasaras-release/

Hope this does not escalate to repeated communal violence, with Buddhist and Muslim extremists inciting violence against innocent people in other communities.