Sri Lankan bishops desire govt to release inquiry on 2019 Easter blasts
23 February, 2021
Sri Lanka’s Roman Catholic bishops said on Monday (Feb 22) they are suspicious of the government’s motives found in not sharing the statement of a presidential commission of inquiry in to the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks in 2019 that killed more than 260 persons, and instead appointing another committee to review it.
The Reverend Winston Fernando, the head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka, said the church was alarmed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's decision the other day to appoint a new six-member committee of government ministers to review the report without sharing it with the church or the lawyer general for the prosecution of suspects.
“We have a whole lot of doubts about this whole procedure, the whole thing gets delayed," Rev Fernando told The Associated Press.
“If there are people involved, they would like to protect them, I suppose, what else?" Rev Fernando said, without elaborating.
He said the committee, comprising only participants of the ruling coalition, had not been balanced and its own integrity was compromised by the inclusion of people who've other court conditions pending against them.
The bomb attacks on Apr 21, 2019, were blamed on two regional Muslim groups who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. The targets had been two Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church and persons eating breakfast at three top tourist hotels. A complete of 171 people were killed in the Catholic churches.
A good communication breakdown between the then president and prime minister that resulted in a lapse in security coordination was thought to have enabled the attacks despite near-specific overseas intelligence warnings in advance.
Ex - President Maithripala Sirisena, who's now a coalition spouse in the Rajapaksa government, and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe were among those questioned by the commission.
The archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, wrote to Rajapaksa earlier this month requesting a copy of the report and soon after warned that he would approach international church bodies for help if the federal government will not act on the report promptly.
The president's office said on Mon that the brand new committee has been given a mandate to recognize measures to be taken by various agencies including Parliament, the judiciary, the Attorney General’s Department, security forces and intelligence services in implementing the presidential commission's recommendations.
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