“GRAND POLITICAL PLOT”: SRI LANKA CARDINAL SEEKS UN PROBE INTO 2019 EASTER BOMBINGS

Tue 08 March 2022:

The head of Sri Lanka’s Roman Catholic Church has called the United Nations to probe the 279 people killed in the Easter Sunday bombings, which he described as a “political plot.”

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith sought a framework to investigate the attacks, which have been placed on local Muslim organizations, in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday.

“The first impression of this massacre was that it was purely the work of a few Islamic extremists,” Ranjith said. “However, subsequent investigations indicate that this massacre was part of a grand political plot.”

The Church has previously claimed that the April 2019 bombings in Colombo, which targeted three churches and three hotels, aided Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory in the presidential elections in November of that year.

The government has remained silent in the face of the Church’s complaints.

SRI LANKA ARRESTS TOP MUSLIM LEADER OVER 2019 EASTER ATTACKS

Ranjith, who initially backed Rajapaksa for president, claimed the government was attempting “to harass and intimidate those who clamour for justice”.

The Criminal Investigations Department has summoned Catholic priests and questioned them extensively over statements critical of the investigation’s poor progress.

“Nearly three years after the horrendous crime, we are still in the dark as to what really happened on that Easter Sunday,” the cardinal said.

A week after meeting with the Pope, he spoke to the United Nations Security Council.

Sri Lanka is currently on the UN’s top human rights body’s agenda for a different reason.

Sri Lankan Muslims ‘not responsible for Easter attack’

It established a framework this year to collect information related to suspected war crimes committed during the island’s Tamil separatist conflict, which concluded in May 2009.

Allegations that Sri Lankan military killed at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the conflict date back to Rajapaksa’s time as the top defense official under his elder brother, then-President Mahinda, when the war was still ongoing.

Allegations that Sri Lankan troops killed at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final months of the war go back to a period when Rajapaksa was the top defence official under his elder brother and then president Mahinda.

Widespread anger: General accused of war crimes appointed Sri Lanka army chief

Both have denied allegations of war crimes.

“We earnestly call upon the UNHRC and all its member countries to support the continuation of evidence gathering initiated by the Council last year and to devise a means to ensure an investigation to unravel the truth behind the Easter Sunday massacre,” the cardinal said.

Two top officials convicted of “crime against humanity” for failing to prevent the Easter Sunday explosions were acquitted by Sri Lanka’s High Court last month.