The Canadian Parvasi - Issue 90

The International News Weekly world
April 26, 2019 | Toronto
07
Grief Hangs Heavy In Colombo Air
Anger Boils Over As Religious Harmony Comes Under Strain
Colombo: Mohammed Rasool,
52, dolefully watched the bombscarred
St Antony’s Church
in Kochchikade, silhouetted
against the darkening evening
sky. The yellow neo-classicalstyle
structure, close to two
centuries old, stands forlorn as
groups of residents poured out
on to the streets, an evening
ritual since the bombing. Four
days after a series of explosions
shook the capital, Sri Lankan
army soldiers continue to hold
vigil around the shrine. The
bell tower clock needle is static
at 8.45am, a poignant reminder
of the hour when the explosion
went off on Sunday morning.
“If they help God (by restoring
the church soon), then God
will help us,” says Rasool, who
has visited the shrine several
times in the past. Five members
of a neoconvert family — Rasool’s
Christian relatives — were
killed instantly when a suicide
bomber blew himself up inside
the Catholic church. G Benton,
32, was inside for the Easter
Mass, along with wife Chandrika
and three children. While
11-month-old Avon’s body was
recovered along with that of his
parents, Bewon, 9, and Clevon, 6,
are ‘missing’.
Opposite the shrine, narrow
dingy alleyways branch off the
main Jampettah Street with its
row of petty shops. “We haven’t
worked for four days,” says Jalabidin
Impas Deen, 38. He runs
a small Chinese eatery on the
beach front, four km away. Jalabidin
cannot rid the images of
people running out with blood
pouring out of their ears and
nose. “I helped at least 15 people
into buses and threewheelers
headed to the government hospital,”
he says.
While the church stands
tall, there’s a Buddhist temple
close by on Jampettah Street,
a mosque, just a stone’s throw
away in Newham Square and a
Shiva temple on Ramanathan
Street to the right of the shrine.
“We have co-existed peacefully,”
says Desmon, 19.
With the Sirisena government
having declared emergency
on Monday, by sundown,
shops downed shutters and traffic
quietly eased off the roads
in Colombo. Security men line
the arterial Galle Main Road,
Colombo’s commercial spine,
where the three luxury hotels
that were wracked by explosions
are located. There’s simmering
anger against the government
for not acting on intelligence
alerts of possible terror attack.
“Look at the seafront (referring
to the China’s international financial
city project). It will soon
be China-Lanka, not Sri Lanka.
This government is ineffective,”
says Tuk Tuk driver Don Christie
Kodisinghe.
At the national government
hospital morgue in the city, it is
quiet grief. The Danish embassy
staff have been on their feet the
whole day, waiting for the embalming
of the three daughters of
billionaire ASOS owner Anders
Holch Povlsen. Denmark’s richest
man and his family had been
on a quiet holiday for Easter and
were at St Anthony’s when the
explosion thundered through the
church.
Lanka prez sacks police
chief, def secy; toll at 359
1 Woman Among 9 Bombers, Most ‘Well-Educated’
Colombo: Sri Lanka's president
on Wednesday asked for the
resignations of the defence secretary
and national police chief
for their failure to prevent the
Sunday Easter bombings, even
as the death toll rose to 359.
President Maithripala Sirisena
asked defence secretary Hemasiri
Fernando and Inspector
General of Police Pujith Jayasundara
to quit after it emerged
that security forces shrugged off
intelligence alerts of an impending
terror strike. In an address
to the nation on Tuesday, Sirisena
had admitted security lapses
and said he would restructure
the police and security forces.
The Islamic State terror
group has claimed responsibility
for the attacks, which ripped
through three churches and
three luxury hotels. Nine suicide
bombers from mostly middleclass
backgrounds carried out
the attacks, said police spokesman
Ruwan Gunasekara. One
of the bombers was the wife of
another bomber, he added. The
woman, two children and three
policemen died in an explosion
as authorities closed in on her
late Sunday.
Sri Lanka’s junior defense
minister, Ruwan Wijewardene,
said the attackers appeared to
be mostly middleclass. “They’re
quite well educated people. We
believe one of them studied in
the UK and then did his postgraduatation
in Australia.”
Spurned by US, N Korea’s Kim holds talks with Putin
Vladivostok (Russia):
Russian President
Vladimir Putin hosted
North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un on Thursday at a
summit intended to show
that the United States is
not the only power with
enough clout to engage
with the reclusive communist
state on its nuclear
programme.
The two men held a day
of talks on an island off
the Russian Pacific city of
Vladivostok two months
after Kim’s summit with
US President Donald
Trump ended in disagreement,
cooling hopes of a
breakthrough in the decades-old
nuclear row.
The first session, comprising
one-on-one talks
with just a few aides present,
lasted twice as long as
the 50 minutes allocated in
the schedule.
“We talked, of course,
about the situation on
the Korean peninsula, we
exchanged views on how
and what we can do so that
there are good prospects
for an improvement in the
situation,” Putin said during
an interval in the talks.
Kim, who had arrived
in Vladivostok a day earlier
on board his armoured
train, said the situation on
the Korean peninsula “is
an issue that the world is
very interested in.” Sitting
opposite Putin and the rest
of the Russian delegation,
he said he had come to Russia
to meet Putin personally
and to exchange views
on the nuclear standoff.
He said he wanted to
“to discuss issues of strategic
stability and joint management
of the situation in
the future, and to develop
our traditional relations to
meet the demands of a new
century.”
A second session of
talks, involving larger
delegations, ended with
no statements from either
side.
The two leaders then
attended a gala dinner
where they toasted each
other and watched traditional
musical numbers
and dancing performed by
Russian artists.
The numbers included
the Russian classic song
“Black Eyes” and a Korean
song called “the Great
Commander,” Russian
state media reported.
Kim then left the summit
venue, waving to Putin
as his car drove off.
Sanctions
With North Korea-US
talks stalled, the summit
in Vladivostok provides
Pyongyang with an opportunity
to seek support
from a new quarter, Russia,
and possible relief
from the sanctions hurting
its economy.
For the Kremlin, the
summit is a chance to
show it is a global diplomatic
player, despite efforts
by the United States
and other Western states
to isolate it.
Russian officials have
indicated they will come
out in support of a resumption
of the six-way talks on
Pyongyang’s nuclear programme,
a long-standing
format that had been sidelined
by the Trump-Kim
diplomatic push.
But with Moscow committed
to upholding international
sanctions until
North Korea dismantles its
nuclear programme, analysts
said the summit was
unlikely to produce any
tangible help for Pyongyang,
beyond a show of camaraderie.
Putin has a track record
of making world leaders
wait for him, but on
Wednesday the Russian
leader arrived at the venue
around half an hour before
Kim showed up, according
to a Reuters reporter at the
scene.
Putin and Kim, in their
first ever face-to-face encounter,
smiled broadly
and shook hands outside
the summit venue, a university
campus. They then
stood side by side on an
escalator, chatting with
help from interpreters, as
they made their way to an
upper floor to begin their
talks.
Putin’s last summit
with a North Korean leader
was in 2002 when his
counterpart was Kim Jong
Il, Kim Jong Un’s father
and predecessor. Kim Jong
Il also met in 2011 with
Dmitry Medvedev, the
Putin lieutenant who was
then Russian president.
Thursday’s summit
took place on the campus
of the Far Eastern Federal
University, a complex that
back in 2012 played host to
an Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation summit.