2019 Easter Sunday Attack in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper primarily examines the Easter Sunday bombings plotted and executed by a group of Sri Lankan Muslims and the impact of post-war conditions in Sri Lanka towards the Muslims in the country. Aimed at Christians and tourists, a string of bomb blasts was orchestrated killing hundreds of people in Sri Lanka as they gathered for Easter Sunday Mass. It is a controversial fact that the post-war violence, organized Islamophobia among overall non-Muslim communities and the Sinhalese in particular, has increased their fears and distrust towards Sri Lankan Muslims in general and state enterprises of Muslim political leaders who supported the successive Sri Lankan ruling class from independence through the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. Although having meant an isolation of the community from the two main ethnic communities, the concessions that the Muslim community had won, has actively helped them to be proactive in their religious practices and thus paved the way for exclusive social and political choices. However, prior to the Easter Sunday attack there were still many motionless conflicts between Muslims and non- Muslims in the country. After the Easter Sunday bomb attack, these tensions heightened and spread through whole of Sri Lanka.