In what now must be considered one of the worst terror attacks in modern history, an Islamist-Jihadist group in Sri Lanka took advantage of the peaceful celebrations on Easter Sunday to strike a terrible, inhumane blow at Christians, tourists, and the heart of the Sri Lankan Economy. As of the writing of this piece, at least 290 people have been killed and 450 people wounded.
Sri Lanka, a country of a mere 22 million people, is the last Buddhist-majority country in what was historically once heavily-Buddhist South Asia. It is a country that struggled with a decades-long brutal ethnic civil war between the Tamil Tigers in the north and the Sinhalese-majority government, that ended in the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, in a conflict that was full of very serious human rights violations by basically all sides. Since then, it has become a popular tourist destination, with a large part of tourism focused on cultural interest in a country that has a majority Buddhist population, but also significant Christian, Hindu, and Muslim minority populations. There had been religious tensions in Sri Lanka in the past, but nothing could have prepared the people there for the scale of terror visited upon them on Easter Sunday.
Within a period of approximately 30 minutes, co-ordinated suicide bombings killed worshippers at Easter Sunday services in three Catholic churches in multiple cities and three luxury hotels in the capitol city, Colombo. With these co-ordinated attacks, the terrorists simultaneously struck a blow at the heart of Christianity and at the heart of tourism in Sri Lanka, and have potentially massively increased religious tensions in the country and the region.
It is incredibly sad that people who were peacefully celebrating a day of renewal and spirituality, and people enjoying what is supposed to be the most pleasant and relaxing time of the year, had their lives snatched from them, or will have to live with incredible trauma and the result of severe injuries for the rest of their lives. All this merely because the ideology of a horrible group of people considers innocent civilians who don't adhere to their ideology to be worthy of death.
May those who died in the horror of this event rest in peace, may those who were injured, yet survived, overcome their injuries and trauma, and may those who lost family and friends find consolation.