Political tension hits Sri Lanka, Muslim officials accused of terrorism links

Ahmed Lamloum

Sri Lanka has been living a troubled political situation since the Easter Sunday bombings that killed 258 people.

The scene only got complicated after all nine Muslim ministers in Sri Lanka’s government and two Muslim provincial governors resigned on Monday.

The resignations were in response to a hunger strike by an influential Buddhist monk, Athuraliye Rathana, who said he would fast to death unless the country’s president removed three senior Muslim officials — the two provincial governors and one of the ministers.

Rathana accused the three Muslim officials of having ties to the suicide bombers who targeted churches and hotels.

The eight ministers not targeted by Rathana announced their resignations in what appeared to be an act of solidarity with the three officials accused by the monk, who also serves as a member of Parliament and an adviser to the president, Maithripala Sirisena.

In a letter to Sri Lanka’s president before starting his hunger strike, the monk made vague accusations that the three Muslim politicians were aiding terrorism, and asked for them to be removed from office so an investigation could be carried out properly.

Since the attack, the country’s Muslim population, about 10 percent of the total 21 million people, has increasingly faced suspicion and violence.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has held a press briefing where he confirmed that India had provided prior intelligence on the jihadi threat.

“India gave us the intelligence but there has been a lapse on how we acted on that… intelligence was not conveyed down the line,” Wickremesinghe added.

After the assaults, Sri Lanka authorities have detained 100 individuals who are claimed to have connections with the terrorist National Thowheeth Jama’ath that received a ban by the government.

Demonstrations by several thousand people gripped the central pilgrim city of Kandy as

A week of anti-Muslim riots in a suburb of Kandy left three people dead and more than 20 injured.

More than 200 Muslim-owned homes and shops were also destroyed and the government clamped a brief state of emergency in the area to contain the violence.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Wanathawilluwa in Puttalam has also arrested four people for the possession of 100kg of explosives and several other items, including detonators. The suspects were arrested when the CID was on the hunt to apprehend the suspects involved behind the vandalisation of Buddhist statues in the recent weeks.

Police investigations found links between terrorists who were caught for seizing explosive and firebrand cleric Zahran Hashim who played a key role in one of the worst attacks in the country’s history.