Category Archives: life stories

May 1, 2019 · 5:26 pm

Police Deaths in the Line of Duty

News Item in Ceylon Today + Adaderana + themorning.lk  …with headline “Police officers killed in Dematagoda posthumously promoted”

he three police officers who died in an explosion at a housing scheme in Dematagoda yesterday (21) have been posthumously promoted on the instructions of the Inspector General of Police (IGP). Accordingly Sub-Inspector (SI) Rohana Sandun Bandara has been posthumously promoted to the rank of Inspector of Police (IP) while Police Constables (PCs) Bathiya Ratnayake Bandara and Lahiru Umesh Dulanjala have been promoted to the rank of Police Sergeant.

The three police officers, who were attached to the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD), were killed while conducting a search at a suspected safe house in Dematagoda, when its occupants apparently detonated explosives to prevent arrest.

A FURTHER NOTE from A PAL in Melbourne

THREE NAMES
1 Police Sg Bhatiya Bandara Ratnayake of Ketakumbara, Kandy/married with two children
2 Poice sub  Inspector Rohana Sadun Bandara of Madapatha, Piliyandala – OIC of anti Corruption unit of Western Province /married and has a daughter and 10 months old baby
3 Poiice constable Lahiru Dulangana of Mathugama Married and has a 10 months old baby
FROM one page  article in Sunday Divaina of 28th April with the heading…Lion hearted heroic sons…Heroic song on the day the traitors made noises

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May 1, 2019 · 8:34 am

Bishop Illangasinghe’s Pastoral Sermon encompassing People of All the Faiths in Lanka

Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe, with this title in Colombo Telegraph, 27 April 2019, “Post Easter Reflections 2019″

“Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing”.   Luke 23:34

Sri Lanka is once again in deep shock and saddened by the attacks on the peaceful worshippers on Easter Sunday and the innocent visitors from abroad and from within Sri Lanka, who were at the hotels. The carnage is unprecedented in the recent times, when as a nation Sri Lanka was struggling to emerge from the depths of racial, ethnic and religious divide. This is the largest number of innocent civilians in the recent history of the country who have been killed in one day. It is the most vulnerable in the community, the women, young people and children, who have been mainly affected.

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May 1, 2019 · 3:51 am

Hospital Staff in the Line of Duty: Easter Sunday 2019

A Sri Lankan Medical Specialist, in Daily News, 1 May 2019, where the title is “Unsung heroes of Easter Sunday” **

It must [have been] just 9.15 in the morning on Easter Sunday, April 21, when I received a call from my wife to inform me that there had been bomb attacks on some churches.She wanted me to come home immediately. I was examining my last patient at a private hospital. I got into the car and was driving along the main road when I received a text message. Usually, I would not have looked at it immediately, but in the light of the information given by my wife, I stopped the car by the side of the road and read it. It was a SOS from a medical academic organisation asking doctors to go immediately to the Accident Service of the National Hospital in Colombo and the General Hospital, Negombo, to help with treating the injured. The message did not have any details, but the nature and tone of it was such that it implied a major catastrophe. I phoned my wife and told her that I was going to the Accident Service and drove straight there.

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April 30, 2019 · 9:49 am

A Muslim Lankan’s Thoughts on the Atrocities and Their Implications

Irfan Husain, in Sri Lanka Guardian, 29 April  2019, where the title is “Jihadis in Sri Lanka”

Whenever there’s a terrorist attack anywhere, I pray that Muslims weren’t involved. And if they are, I cross my fingers and wish none of them were Pakistanis. In the horror stories emerging from Sri Lanka, I seem to have got my second wish. However, this is scant consolation for the mayhem unleashed by a little-known Islamist group, the National Towheed Jamaath (NTJ), backed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

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April 29, 2019 · 4:19 pm

Sirisena and Ranil birched — Admiral Kumaresan, Lt Col Anil Amarasekera and DIG HMGBM Kotakadeniya

ONE = Retd Air Vice Marshal Arun Kumaresan: “Easter Sunday bombing: Questions to Minister of Defence, Law and Order: Cost of manipulating higher defence management – National Security Council”  in Daily FT, 24 April 2019,  http://www.ft.lk/opinion/Easter-Sunday-bombing–Questions-to-Minister-of-Defence–Law-and-Order/14-676888

It was a sad and horrific day for all humans not only Sri Lankans nor Christians. Tentacles of religious fundamentalism and extremism have consumed many innocent lives on the day they were celebrating the resurrection of Christ. But as the reports indicate there had been a pre warning; not general but specific to violent acts targeting the Christians.

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April 29, 2019 · 11:23 am

The Saddened and Peaceful Muslims of Kattankudy express Sorrow in Peace

Item in Colombo Telegraph, 28 April 2019, entitled

At a time when our motherland, Sri Lanka, is grieving at the tragic deaths of our Christian brothers and sisters, and also other innocents from this country and abroad, who have fallen victims to the atrocities of terrorists in certain parts of this country, we release this communiqué with a heavy heart, while expressing our deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased and those suffering at hospitals.

Zahran Hashim

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April 29, 2019 · 3:42 am

Sheridan’s Concise Overview of Security Failures and the Islamic Extremist Threat in Sri Lanka … and This World

Greg Sheridan, in Weekend Australian, 27/28 April 2019, where the title is “Eternal vigilance is the price of keeping Islamist terror at bay”…. with highlighting emphasis added by The Editor

India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, tried for two years to tell its Sri Lankan colleagues they faced a growing threat of Islamist terrorism. But the Colombo authorities weren’t interested. If there was any threat, they believed it came from the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But the Tamil Tiger threat ended 10 years ago.

We don’t have a problem with our Muslims, the Sri Lankans insisted. By and large they were right about their Muslims. But out of maybe two million Sri Lankan Muslims, there was a problem with at least a couple of hundred, of whom a dozen or so became hard-boiled terrorists. Nine became suicide bombers, 10 if you count the bomb that one suspect detonated as police approached her home. That was more than enough. A Muslim man prays while perched on the roof of a mosque to spot possible hostile people during Friday prayers in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 26. Picture: AP

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April 28, 2019 · 3:34 pm

The Emergence of Salafi Jihadists in the Kattankudy Locality in the Eastern Province

 Ameen Izzadeen and Abdullah Shahnawaz from Kattankudy, in Sunday Times, 28 April 2019, where the title reads “Lightning, thunder and a blast: On the trail of terror leader”

April 17: A man walks into the Kattankudy police station to complain that something unusual had happened on his land at Palamunai.  Police visit the scene and discover a Scooty motorcycle has been blasted using explosives. It had been blasted the previous day, April 16.

April 18: A young Kattankudy woman visits her old parents living in a house in a nearby area to give them lunch. That was the last time she saw them. She assumes the father who was complaining of a leg pain, has gone, accompanied by the mother, to see a native physician in Kinniya. But he never goes anywhere without informing the daughter.  This puzzles her, but on April 21, she pieces the puzzle together and realises her family’s involvement in the worst ever terror attack to shake this country.

              The face of terror: Zahran Cassim

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April 28, 2019 · 11:21 am

Double Standards among Liberals in the West: No RAGE from Sri Lankan Horrors in Contrast with Reaction to Christchurch

Brendan O’Neill, in Weekend Australian, 27 April 2019, with this title “Hierarchy of Victimhood: The slaughter of Christians elicits grief not outrage “

Where is the anger over the apocalyptic barbarism visited upon Christians in Sri Lanka? Where is the fury? Where are the tweets and blog posts and viral videos offering solidarity to Christians and slamming the bombers as a members of a global fascistic movement? Such wrath has been notable by its absence, or at least its rarity, in the aftermath of the extremist slaughter that killed at least 253 people, the majority of them Christians marking the resurrection of Christ at Easter Sunday ­services.

Yes, there has been sorrow. And there has been some very strong media coverage. People want to know the stories of those who were killed, and feel the pain of the those they left behind. But rage? There has been very little.

A woman is overcome with grief during a funeral for a victim of the Easter Sunday attack on St Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka. Picture: Getty Images Continue reading →

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April 28, 2019 · 12:31 am

Terrorism in Sri Lanka: Some Threads in Social Media …. with Analytic Reflections

Sanjana Hattotuwa, in Sunday Island, 28 April 2019, where the title is “It doesn’t make sense”
-Naren Hattotuwa – Easter Sunday.” … with highlighting emphasis being the work of The Editor, Thuppahi

A Scene from Christchurch … and Sri Lanka

On Monday, my 12-year-old son learnt his classmate had passed away at the Intensive Care Unit, a victim of one of the blasts in Colombo. My son’s mother and I grew up in the long shadow of the Black July anti-Tamil pogrom and the UNP-JVP violence in the late 80s. For many in our generation and older, there is a normalization of violence. This is often confused with getting used to or accepting violence.

After the Christchurch massacre in March, many Kiwis trying to get to grips with the scale of the violence unthinkingly said that since I came from Sri Lanka, I was far more used to dealing with terrorism. I suppose that’s in a way true. Mundane things done every day have their own logic and reason that no one from outside cycles of violence would understand. In Kabul, a city where so much is wrong and getting worse, I feel completely at home amidst the detours, convoys, checkpoints, occasional explosion, news of imminent attacks and sporadic gunfire – or the sound of an engine back-firing shrugged off as gunfire, obviously the lesser evil there. The assumption that the more time one spends with it, the greater the ease in dealing with terrorism is, however, untrue. Continue reading →

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