New era | The UN calls for justice for Easter victims in Lanka

The United Nations on Sunday called on Sri Lanka to bridge its “accountability gap” and ensure justice, as the country commemorated the 279 victims of its worst-ever attack on civilians five years ago.

The UN’s top envoy to the country, Marc-Andre Franche, told a memorial service in Colombo that there must be a “thorough and transparent investigation” to uncover those behind the 2019 Easter massacre.

Islamic bombers hit three churches and three hotels in the island’s deadliest suicide bombing targeting civilians, but grieving families say they are still waiting for justice.

The dead included 45 foreigners, including tourists visiting the island a decade after the end of a brutal ethnic conflict that had claimed more than 1,00,000 lives since 1972.

“Sri Lanka suffers from an ongoing lack of accountability, whether for alleged war crimes, more recent human rights violations, corruption or abuse of power, which must be addressed if the country is to move forward,” Franche said.

He noted that the victims were still seeking justice despite the country’s Supreme Court holding then-President Maithripala Sirisena and his top officials responsible for failing to prevent the attack.

“Providing justice for the victims of these attacks must be part of addressing the systemic challenge,” Franche said.

He said the UN Human Rights Office has also called on Colombo to publish the full findings of previous investigations into the Easter Sunday bombings and to launch an independent investigation.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, accused the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe of suppressing new evidence and protecting those behind the jihadists.

“It is clear that Islamist extremists carried out the attack but there were other forces behind it,” Ranjith said.

“We must conclude that the current government is also trying to protect them.”

He has previously claimed that military intelligence officers staged the April 21, 2019, attack to support the political ambitions of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a retired army officer who campaigned on security. Seven months later he won the presidency.

Since coming to power, Rajapaksa has systematically protected the people behind the bombings, the cardinal said.

Rajapaksa was forced to resign in July 2022 after months of protests over an unprecedented economic crisis that caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Thousands of minority Catholics in Sri Lanka held a silent protest outside the capital after the multi-faith services to bless the victims, including more than 80 children.

Relatives carried photos of the dead and protested in the city of Negombo – known as Sri Lanka’s ‘Little Rome’ due to its large concentration of Catholics.

Military personnel armed with automatic assault rifles watched as demonstrators marched to the nearby St. Sebastian’s Church, where 114 people were killed in the coordinated suicide bombings.

Evidence presented in a civil case brought by relatives of the victims showed that Indian intelligence officials warned Colombo about the bombings some seventeen days earlier, but authorities failed to act.

Then-President Sirisena and his officials were ordered to pay 310 million rupees ($1 million) in compensation to victims and relatives.

But the ruling has yet to be fully implemented as Sirisena has appealed and a new hearing is scheduled for July.