The Easter Sunday Bombings in Sri Lanka
Causes and Consequences
A Roundtable
Harini Amarasuriya (Open University Sri Lanka/IASH)
Farzana Haniffa (Colombo/Cambridge)
Alan Keenan (International Crisis Group – by Skype)
Farah Mihlar (Exeter)
Jonathan Spencer (Edinburgh)
The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka seemed to take everyone by surprise. They were the first such attacks in the decade that followed the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war. Although some of the alleged perpetrators were relatively well-known as agitators and potential trouble-makers, and although it has now emerged that international intelligence agencies tried to pass on warnings that something like this might happen, the bombings themselves seemed to have come out of nowhere. If the antecedents are unclear, the possible consequences are much clearer. A weak government has lost even more credibility in the buck-passing that followed the bombs themselves. Those responsible for years of anti-Muslim agitation claimed vindication. A few weeks after the bombing, hundreds of Muslim properties and businesses in Northwest Province were attacked in what looked like a well-organized and co-ordinated sweep.
One month on, what do we know about the causes of the attacks, the background of the attackers, the putative role of transnational terror groups like ISIS? And what are the longer-term implications for Sri Lanka as a religiously and ethnically plural society?
Wednesday, May 29th, 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
Violet Laidlaw Room (6th floor)
Chrystal Macmillan Building
George Square, Edinburgh
Social Anthropology and the Centre for South Asian Studies
School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh