Easter Sunday Attack, No Heads Rolled
Dr. M.M. Janapriya
Last Sunday devotees assembled as usual at the churches but in a grander scale to observe the Easter Sunday. Some sat down with friends and family for breakfast at three of the city’s top most hotels to celebrate Easter. Alas! in a matter of milliseconds 259 innocent lives were blasted and over 600 were injured by some mentally deranged or misguided youth carrying powerful bombs in their back packs. This tragedy took place despite the authorities getting to know well in advance that an attack on sites of worship of Christian faith and some 5 star hotels was imminent. Even so why wasn’t it thwarted?
Response of the Cardinal
In the face of there being clear and unforgivable security lapses which converted a preventable attack in to an inevitable one, the Arch bishop was magnanimous enough to make every effort to dispel any fears the country might have developed on the ordinary Muslim community and remained consciously above the level of playing the usual blame game. This prevented a possible backlash and more bloodshed for certain so the Arch Bishop’s approach was exemplary and indeed deserves to be lauded.
Chronology
On their own admission the government knew for quite some time that there have been extremists of Islamic faith in our midst. On the 4th April 2019 or thereabouts foreign intelligence agencies have officially alerted the local counterparts of the imminent danger giving a good amount of detail in the process. Apparently Indian intelligence have been briefing their Sri Lankan counterparts of this attack for about 4 months at unofficial level and in the last month this briefing has happened weekly till the official intimation took place on the 4th April. According to foreign journalists, countries rarely get this kind of detailed information. In the above mentioned background one would have expected the Sri Lankan authorities to have moved very quickly and to have mobilized all their intelligence, police and military muscle in order to draw up a fool proof plan to thwart this attack. Instead, what followed was a comedy of errors. The IGP apparently wrote letters (I am not sure of the date of the letter) to 5 DIGG about the matter but the action 4 of them seems to have taken is unclear. The one in charge of VIP security had intimated in writing to his colleagues in charge of different VIPs asking them to tighten the security of the latter by letter dated 9th April 2019. This reminds me of how the health department functioned the time I started working as a junior doctor 48 years ago. Write letters and wait for things to happen. The way the Defense Secretary responded to foreign journalists trying to absolve himself from blame was shameful to say the least. One of the young Ministers owes his life to his dad who was in a hospital ICU. The senior advised him not to go to the church on the fateful day as there had been a threat of an attack on churches. Unfortunately even this minister failed to pass this information to the public. If the strength of the information was such that it prevented him attending the Easter Sunday mass, it was indeed authentic enough for him to have left no stone unturned to inform the public of the impending disaster.
The president and the Prime Minister were quick to place before the suspecting nation, the reason why they should not be responsible for letting the attack go through by audacious inaction. The time now is 11.30 pm on the 26th April 2019 and just about 10 minutes ago I watched the President Mr. Sirisena being quizzed by journalists at a press conference. A little earlier he addressed the nation in which speech he exclaimed many times “I am not trying to shirk responsibility for not being able to prevent this attack. The entire government should stand responsible”. There is a saying, the one who excuses accuses himself, so let the nation decide whether the head of the state who was holidaying in Singapore (his own revelation on state TV of 26th April 2019) when the country was getting blasted like falling dominos was indeed a Nero playing the viola when Rome was on fire. It looks to me that the 359 people who paid the ultimate price had committed as a group, an unforgivable sin (like facilitating mass killers by suboptimal action, inexplicable inaction or indeed as a result of professional lethargy) in one of their previous births, for they went on their exit journey despite there being enough that could have been done to foil the attacks that killed them.
