Anti-Buddhist NTJ behind attack?
Posted on April 21st, 2019
NEENA GOPAL THE ASIAN AGE.
Warning by Indian intelligence sent on April 7 went unheeded.
Sri Lankan firefighters stand in the area around St. Anthony’s Shrine after a blast in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Photo: AP)
Bengaluru: Hours after the first six bombs tore through some of the Sri Lankan capital’s most revered Christian shrines, followed by two more, shattering a 10-year hiatus from a 30-year-long bloody campaign by the Tamil Tigers, the island nation may be facing a fresh and far more virulent threat posed by a radical Muslim group in the form of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ). Six members of the NTJ were reportedly arrested when the police homed in one of their hideouts in the city.
A warning by Indian intelligence that NTJ, a virulently anti-Buddhist group that was linked to the vandalisation of Buddhist statues, would target churches in Colombo as well as the Indian high commission and possibly the Indian-owned Taj Samudra hotel, only minutes away from the Cinnamon Grand and ShangriLa hotels — both of which were attacked — was sent to the Sri Lankan authorities on April 7.
A letter, seen by this newspaper, from Sri Lankan police chief Pujuth Jayasundara, dated April 11, to his officers, in which he sends out a nationwide alert and clearly states that suicide bombers planned to blow up prominent churches” and the Indian high commission, remained unheeded. One of the two suicide missions targeted the Cinnamon Grand on Sunday morning.
The government of President Maithripala Sirisena which is run by his arch-rival Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe admitted that they had been informed of the alert, but only after the Sri Lankan capital faced an attack that is now being compared in scale to 9/11. Mr Wickremesinghe said he did not know why he wasn’t informed of the threat. High-level diplomats in Sri Lankan missions told this newspaper that they had no knowledge of the alert.
However, in January, the Sri Lankan police seized a haul of explosives and detonators stashed near a wildlife sanctuary following the arrest of four men from NTJ, the newly-formed radical Muslim group.
The Muslim community in Sri Lanka has been largely peaceful, distancing itself from the Tamil separatists, among whom were a number of Christians. Tensions between the Buddhist and Muslims had boiled over in 2014, when riots broke in Kalutara, after the Bodhu Bala Sena, a Buddhist group, incited a rampage against Muslims, and a blanket ban was imposed on reporting the incidents.
Intelligence sources, however, said Sunday’s Easter Day bombings may have been the NTJ’s payback for the Christchurch massacre. Some reports suggest that ISIS, which has no presence in Sri Lanka, but does operate in the Maldives, saw the Easter Sunday congregations as the perfect target to level scores.
April 22nd, 2019 at 11:48 pm
I am very sad about this terrible loss of life in Sri Lanka.
Even though this wanton crime is tragic, there is ONE THING to be happy about: it did not arise from a communal religious conflict that originated within Sri Lanka. It is VERY UNLIKELY to INCITE religious conflict among the communities in Sri Lanka because they are rallying around in support of the Christian community.
Even now, it is well understood by most Sri Lankans that this was perpetrated by a small local Muslim jihadist group allied to the Islamic State which has now been completely ousted from their “Caliphate of Northern Iraq and Southern Syria”. The local terrorists have clearly received the organizational expertise, technology and the brain washing to field suicide bombers, from the Islamic State, and some of the suicide bombers may even be foreign.
This terrorist strike may also be in RETALIATION for the recent massacre of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand by a Christian terrorist.
The global security community has been expecting such a strike … somewhere, some time and Sri Lanka, vulnerable and woefully unprepared under an incompetent government, was an easy target for the Islamic State to exact their revenge against their perceived “enemies”: the Christians and the citizens of Western powers who defeated them.
However, one other thing is also abundantly clear: the PRESENT Government of Sri Lanka failed monumentally to protect the people, despite having received REPEATED WARNINGS of an impending strike.
Already INEXPLICABLE aspects of their negligence have raised suspicions and allegations of their connection to this strike and possible motives; stay tuned to the local news channels regarding this.
Caught in their own rhetoric of “human rights” and pandering to the demands of the defeated Tamil terrorists still striving to achieve the “Eelam” they could not win by war, over the last 3 years the present government undermined the intelligence and the security forces, dismantled armed forces institutions and police forces that had defeated and defended Sri Lanka against local and foreign inspired terrorism, and hunted down our heroes for alleged “war crimes” against the Tamil Terrorists, leaving the country wide open to the influx of terrorists both Muslim and Tamil, international drug dealers, and assorted criminals of every kind who had been defeated, imprisoned or chased out by the previous government.
After 10 years of post-war peace without one single violent incident, we are now seeing ONE MORE EXAMPLE of the many adverse impacts of this unpatriotic, negligent and grossly incompetent government on the innocent ordinary people of Sri Lanka.
In my view, this incompetent government should RESIGN IMMEDIATELY and hand over power NOW to those who have amply demonstrated in the past that they have the will and the experience to protect and defend ALL of its people.
In my view, whether this government resigns now or not, they will without a doubt be VOTED OUT in the national elections to be held early next year.
Also without a doubt, this incident will have a SEVERE ADVERSE IMPACT on Sri Lanka’s economy.