Sri Lanka, the sunny emerald isle to India’s south, is in the throes of serious civil strife. A peace loving country, which had slowly started to come out of a debilitating two-and-a-half decade conflict with Tamil extremists that claimed thousands of lives, is now up against yet another discord foisted upon it in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings. On Tuesday, the government imposed a nationwide curfew for a second straight night and arrested several people after Sinhalese mobs attacked Muslim-owned shops, vehicles and mosques, leaving one dead. Since the bomb attacks, communal violence has gone from bad to worse and homes and mosques have been vandalised by large groups of people armed with weapons and sticks.
Sri Lanka has become a classic case of what a terror attack can do to relations between different communities that have co-existed together for a long time. It also needs to be examined how a country with little under 10 per cent Muslim population has now become a victim of rampant communal disturbances. None of the signs look encouraging. The government has re-imposed a ban on social media. It has already blocked Facebook and WhatsApp and has now extended the ban to Twitter. The social media blockade is meant to prevent the spread of rumours and hate comments, which have been swirling in the island nation since the beginning of the backlash that followed the Easter attacks. Police said they have arrested at least two prominent instigators along with nearly 20 others for violence.
So India, a long-standing ally of Sri Lanka, surely has to render all possible help to its neighbour to restore order. It will not be in India’s favour to let a few ISIS-linked terrorists create havoc in its backyard.
