Just when Sri Lankans thought we had left all this violence behind them after the civil war.
Sri Lanka was rocked by a series of bombings that killed more than 300 people and injured over 500 people, at churches and big hotels. Most of the victims are believed to be Sri Lankans, but at least 31 foreigners are among the dead too.
Attack Time Line:
The first reports came in at about 8:45 am local time on Sunday morning. Six simultaneous explosions at luxury hotels and churches holding Easter mass. Three were at churches – in Colombo’s Kochchikade district, Negombo north of the capital, and Batticaloa in the east. The other three blasts rocked the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotels in Colombo.
Two further explosions were reported later: seventh in Dehiwala in southern Colombo, And the eighth explosion happened near the Colombo district of Dematagoda during a police raid, killing three officers.
Hundreds of Sri Lankan families are in mourning. The confirmed international casualties are from the UK, Denmark, Portugal, India, Turkey, Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, the US and China. Among the dead are three children of Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, owner of the Bestseller clothing chain and the largest stakeholder in clothing giant Asos.
The alleged bombers:
National Thowheed Jamath with some international help being suspected behind the little known Islamic group. The group has no history of large-scale attacks but came to prominence last year when it was blamed for damaging Buddhist statues.
Sri Lanka’s history and religion:
Buddhism is Sri Lanka’s biggest religious group, about 70% of the population. Christians form up to 7% of the 21 million population. Sunday’s attacks were the worst ever against Sri Lanka’s small Christian minority. Hindus and Muslims make up around 12% and 10% of the population respectively. The attacks are Sri Lanka’s deadliest act of violence since the end of the country’s 26-year civil war in 2009. The war is thought to have killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people and ended with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, who had fought for independence for the Tamil minority.
This attack sends a message to everyone around the world that how we are not safe in probably the quietest places in the world. Though I believe terror has no religion, this brings up the issue of Islamic terror to the forefront.
The teardrop-shaped country of Sri Lanka, for now, symbolizes the pain and sorrow of a bloody Easter Sunday. One day, though, it will symbolize the happiness of an island that has rebuilt and come out that much stronger.
The moment we stop fighting “for” each other, that’s the moment we lose our humanity.
Over 500 people dead in the last one week including 121 children. These innocent civilians fell victim to the mass murder due to bombardment by the government forces of their country. Yes they were the citizens of Syria, where the government, in its quest to crush the opposing rebel forces has forgotten to differentiate between civilians and the rebel outfits, sparing not even the innocents in the bloodbath that has become Syria’s identity. Over 393,000 people remain trapped in the area of Eastern Ghouta which Syrian forces backed by Russia have been pounding since last Sunday. The humanitarian crisis has been largely due to the government of Syria and its allies Iran and Russia. UN Security Council has been debating and is struggling on a ceasefire resolution, but Russia is not ready to back down without dealing a final blow to the rebel forces in Damascus and has been accused by western powers of stalling time. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described the conditions in Syria as hell on earth. There couldn’t have been a more apt term to describe the country that’s almost on the verge of its destruction.
A Syrian refugee child cries at the Al Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria.
The Syrian Civil war has stretched on for more than six years now and the end seems to be nowhere in sight. Over 400,000 people have lost their lives and more than 5 million people have fled the country. But this article is not to discuss the background and the causes of the war; this is to discuss the world’s appalling silence and ignorance over the plight of Syria. People are so busy living in their comfortable delusional worlds where Syria is a far off mythical land where no matter how many more people keep dying every day, it’s going to have no effect on rest of the world. You probably think that what has happened to that country could never happen to your’ s or to put it more bluntly, you have no business paying attention to the fate of Syria. To you, Syria exists in a different universe, unworthy of your empathy or even your attention. The dying children, the pain of those innocent people means nothing to you, the violence doesn’t bother you, because their existence never did in the first place. But you see, the Syrians too probably never thought that this could happen to them, that the bloodshed would go long for this long.
You might think, why should you bother about it and anyway it is an international issue, so what difference would it make even if chose to bother? Let us discuss the first why. Firstly, we need to bother about Syria because of the most simple reason that we are human. If the sight of little Aylan Kurdi washed up on the shores of the sea didn’t shake your senses, if the sight of countless starving homeless scared Syrian children doesn’t wake you up from your slumber or if the thought of countless innocent people being killed like insects on daily basis doesn’t make a difference to you, then I don’t know what will. Why is it that a mass shooting in Chicago triggers protests throughout the world but no one even bats an eyelid over the news of thousands of lives being torn apart in Syria every single day. Have we stooped so low that even our empathy has become biased upon what sells and what not? Why is it that some lives get the sympathy of the entire world and the value of some lives is reduced to being cheaper than oil? Will you only take notice when Facebook makes it the new cool to upload your DP with the Syrian flag? Just remember, when the world let Iraq and Afghanistan bleed, Taliban happened. And now while the world is busy ignoring Syria, ISIS is happening. Proxy battlegrounds like the war torn Syria are the breeding ground of terrorists. Some people believe that Syria deserves it because the country gave birth to the deadliest terrorist outfits of recent times, ISIS. But have you spared a thought as to why people become terrorists? Because they were neglected, because nobody paid attention to them when they being exploited. When atrocities were being committed against them, nobody saved them. And that is what led them to get misguided and blindfolded in the farce of religious bigotry . Because these people see every day, their country being reduced to ashes, their culture, their heritage being brought to ruins, their children killed, their houses burnt, their women raped and still not a ray of justice. Their fault? Being born in a country caught in the vicious web of political unrest and violence. The cycle is same everywhere. Exploitation of the weak and poor for the gains of the rich and powerful. The weak take up arms first in defence, and then get misguided and forget to differentiate between their exploiters and the innocent. That is how every terrorist outfit comes into existence, by luring the downtrodden, by misguiding the people who have been wrong and denied justice into false promises of religious salvation. The developed nations leave no opportunity of exploiting and taking advantage of a weaker country with abundant resources.
Now the second question, what you as an individual can do? You could just start by being aware , raise your voice against the heinous cruelty and the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Talk, write, share, create and spread awareness. Opinions are like waves. They travel far and wide. A single person’s opinion might not matter to the world, but a country’s opinion sure does. And when the country is a contender for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, its opinion matters. Being a citizen of that country, you have the power to shape up the mentality of an entire nation, in your own little capacity.
The killing in Syria can be stopped. It is going on because what was an internal political matter of Syria has been blown into a proxy war among the world powers like USA and Russia and regional ones like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. These foreign interventions played the major role in promoting sectarianism between the Shia and Sunni communities of a predominantly secular Syria. The conflicts of the communities gave rise to the bloodiest episodes of violence of recent times. The world powers have long ago stopped thinking about the lives of Syrians and are now using the chaos for the fulfilment of their own interests in Syria. Why did these external powers intervene in the internal affairs of Syria? A well speculated theory suggests that all of this is for the control over the Natural Gas pipeline connecting the Middle East to Europe which is supposed to go through Syria. Russia, which uses its position as the supplier of a quarter of Europe’s natural gas as a political leverage , had its market in trouble due to this pipeline which would link Europe to the Middle East directly and straightaway reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia. Turkey came into the picture as it stands at crossroads of Asia & Europe and is an aspiring member of the European Union. Turkey is considered as the best option for facilitating the movement of gas supplies from Middle East to Europe. US and Turkey want to ensure free export of gas through suppliers in Middle East which is obviously not in the best interests of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Also, Iran’s interest lies in Shia bolstering and its involvement in the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah. So, all these powers are busy fuelling the war further for protection of their respective interests. They supply subsidized weapons, military advisors and monetary funding to the Syrian government forces and the rebel forces depending on who they support. If all of them stop funding the war, it would have stopped probably a long time ago.
Have you ever thought, a country that’s in flames, where does it get the money and resources to keep the war going on? The war is sponsored . Wars are always sponsored. Sponsored by the countries that claim to be the Messiah but in reality are the biggest sponsors of the genocide. It was Iraq in 2003 over oil. And now its Syria for natural gas. Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria. Which country is next?
The world needs to wake up to the pain of Syria. The UN needs to be stern and take measures for a political solution to the conflict. The refugees need to be rehabilitated and the people trapped and unable to flee Syria need to be rescued. In a way, all the countries that have cashed on the war by fuelling it owe the Syrians a safe future. And no, you can’t just blow up a country and ban its citizens from entering your own when they knock at your doorstep for help. If you are so concerned about protecting your country from terrorists, stop creating them. It is that simple.
So people, sit right back up and take notice of what’s happening around the world. Syria maybe far away, Myanmar is not. Don’t even be surprised if another ISIS rises out of the Rohingyas .The world has a lot to learn from the story of the destruction of Syria. How a protest against government oppression turned into widespread violence and how wrong tactics of brute force on the part of the Syrian government lead to the civil war. And the biggest lesson, that if a government invites foreign powers to intervene in its internal matters, they will plunder the country. If you let them in on the internal disputes of your country, if you stand divided as a nation on the basis of caste and religion, just remember , there are powers that are lurking just around the corner to cash in on the unrest.
It’s time we question the vested interests of people and media who promote ‘Islamophobia’ and say that Muslims are terrorists and that Islam is a terrorist religion.
What a shame it is to live in a world where each bomb that explodes, each fire that burns and each cry that is heard is credited not to a group of heartless hyenas but the followers of a particular religion- a religion that preaches peace – Islam. How do we tell the world that this word, ‘Islamophobia’, that was coined in the United States of America after the 9/11 attack is actually an exaggeration of threats faced in the world today? Two well recognised Islamist groups that are known for terrorising the world in the name of Holy Jihad are Al Qaeda and Taliban. But how many of us are aware that only 6% of the attacks that the world faces today are by Muslims?
Latinos
A minority group in the States named Latino is a major threat to the world. They comprise of Roman Catholics who are descendants of people of Spanish speaking countries of South and Central America and Iberian peninsula. They were responsible for the violence from Puerto Rican separatist groups in 1980.
Image source : wikimedia.org
Zealots
Coming to the followers of Judaism, the Jewish extremists proliferated due to Jewish political and religious movement called Zealotry. This was the 1st example of terrorism. They are the creators of mayhem in the holy lands of Israel and Palestine.
Image source : squarespace.com
Communist Terrorism.
There are some people as well who are in the forefront of establishing a socio-economic order by common ownership of means of production and consumption. They are often referred to as The Communists.
The heart wrenching Cambodian genocide was the deed of Communists. From 1975 to 1979, Khmer Rouge, a heinous Communist regime which came to power due to regional instability, wiped out 21% of Cambodia’s population. S-21, one of the notorious Cambodian prisons was known as a torture and interrogation centre. Also, most Cambodian villages and prisons had a killing field, the place where those who were sentenced to death were taken for execution. They were ruthlessly made to dig their own graves. And do you know what is the most inhumane of this all? Only 5 people have been brought to justice for the Cambodian Genocide.
Now, turning to the Left Wing Extremist Groups who are attributed to the Marxist-Leninist terrorism, we get to see that their actions are meant to overthrow the capitalist systems all over the world and replace them with socialist societies. The Naxalites in India and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (a group of the Sri Lankan Tamils demanding a separate state) are well known examples.
Image sources : wikimedia.org
The Red Army
Could anyone have ever thought in the wildest of their dreams that an army could pose a threat to the wellbeing of the world? The International terrorist group- Red Army Faction was formed in 1970 after breaking away from Japanese Communist League. This group is headed by Fuasko Shigenobu, believed to be in hiding outside Japan. They wish to remove the established Japanese government and monarchy. Shigenobu became close friends with an influential member of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Leila Ahmed, as reported by The Brown Political Review. The two women together created a strong bond that defined their pure Marxist, anti-imperialist movements. Together, their mission was “to consolidate the international revolutionary alliance against the imperialists of the world.”
Image source : wikimedia.org
Racial Terrorism
Who would have known that a day would come when racist ideology would give birth to the concept of White Supremacy. This view is cornered on the belief that the whites are superior in race and blood, far ahead of the browns and the blacks. A study by The New American Foundation reveals that the White Americans are one of the biggest threats breathing on the US soil. Almost twice as many people have died in attacks by Right Wing groups in America.
Image source : squarespace.com
Animal Lovers
There are enthusiasts all around the globe who are concerned with the health, safety and psychological wellness of animals. They enrol themselves in what are commonly known as ‘Animal Welfare Societies’. These groups can sometimes take violent forms. One such is the Animal Liberation Front- an international, leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal rights. They pose a threat to the peace of the world.
Image source : ibtimes.co.uk
So do you see? Do you? If you have been a stereotypical critique, it’s time you change your mindset towards people who wake to the melodious sound of the Azaan, the people who abide by the peace keeping principles listed down in the Holy Quran and the Hadith, the ones who believe in a different way to communicate with the Supreme Power.
‘I am afraid and not sure whether I will be able to come out alive. They are killing everyone here’ – the last words of a daughter to her father before she was killed by terrorists in Dhaka.
Sanjiv Jain was excited about the coming week. His son had just returned from college in Canada and his daughter would also be returning soon from Bangladesh from an Internship. With his wife and kids he would go to Firozabad where he would meet his brothers and they would have a lovely happy family reunion. Sanjiv’s plan fell apart after a phone call from his daughter.
Tarishi Jain, an undergraduate economics student at the University of California. She was a recipient of an internship with a Bangladesh bank through the Institute for South Asia studies at her university in California. On the night of Sunday, she called her father to tell him that she was hiding in Holey Artisan bakery’s washroom with her friends to hide from some heavily armed terrorists. ‘I am afraid and not sure whether I will be able to come out alive. They are killing everyone here’. Those were her last words to her father before her death. After the phone conversation with his daughter, Sanjiv gathered with dozens of anxious family and friends inside Gulshan café to know how the incident would end. By the time the terrorists were neutralized, 20 people including Tarishi were dead.
Image source : financialexpress.com
Bangladesh home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said the attackers belonged to homegrown outfits like JMB (Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh). Pakistan’s ISI has a strong connection with the JMB, their aim being to derail the current government. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the killing of the hostages. The army managed to kill six attackers and captured the last one alive. The attackers were aged between 20-28 years and were well educated and came from rich families. All of them were students and communicated at the crime scene in Bengali and English. Three of the five attackers have been identified by former classmates.
The gunmen did a religion check of the captives by asking them to recite Quranic verses and tortured the ones who could not. Most of the killed were found with their throats slit. The hostages who were killed included Tarishi Jain, 9 Italians, 7 Japanese, an American of Bangladeshi origin and two Bangldeshis. Among the rescued were Indian, Sri Lankan and Japanese nationals. Around 30 people were injured.
Image source : indianexpress.com
The incident has left the entire country and many others in a state of apprehension and sorrow. Many families lost their loved ones because they were not Muslim. Murder committed in the name of a religion that forbids killing of innocents and teaches its followers to respect every religion be it their own or any other. We live in a world where religion is used to justify brutal and unnecessary violence. What is the point of religion if it preaches violence over peace? Our hearts go out for the victims of the siege and to their families. May the survivors have a speedy recovery.
Let us all remember that no religion preaches murder and terrorism is a disease that every religion must fight against as one. Let there be no more of Dhaka like attacks anywhere.
Imagine if you’re travelling to your home country from a foreign place. Your mother would be waiting for you, craving to see you again, to hold you in her arms and hear from you about how your life is going. Now imagine what if you don’t make it. The last thing she hears about you is maybe a phone call from the authorities that tells her that you were killed in an attack, or maybe worse she sees you on television dead. Just think as to what would happen to her if that ever happened to her. Despite your good fortune there are many people around the world today who are going through this.
Image source : thanhniennews.com
Istanbul has been the location of three attacks in 2016, including two suicide attacks in January and in March that were both linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and a car bombing in early June claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons. The most recent attack in Istanbul was seen at Atatürk Airport. It is known to be Europe’s third busiest airport in passenger traffic. It was started in 1924 and renamed in 1980. The airport has two passenger terminals, one domestic and one international. The airport will be closed after the massive Istanbul New Airport – planned to be the largest in the world – opens in the Arnavutkoy district. Its first phase is due to be operational in 2017. There are X-ray scanners at the entrance to the terminal but security checks for cars are limited. The first bomb went off on the ground floor at the arrivals terminal, the second one went off on the first floor at the entrance to the departure terminal and the final one went off at the car park terminal.
The three suicide bombers claimed the life of 41 people and 239 were injured. At least 13 of those killed were of foreign nationality. 109 of those hurt have now been discharged from hospital. One Iranian and one Ukrainian were confirmed dead. British counter-terrorism officials claimed the pattern and signs of the attack point towards IS being the culprits. The lack of any immediate claim for this attack by so-called Islamic State is not surprising. IS rarely claims responsibility for attacks against the Turkish state yet it is quick to advertise its assassinations of Syrian activists inside Turkey.
Image source : dw.com
IS has been targeting Turkey because it sees its government as being un-Islamic. Their attempt at taking the law and work of gods into their own hands has again led to massacre of innocents. Not only have they been spreading incorrect values in the name of Islam but they have even massacred innocents in the name of a religion that forbids murder. US and the rest of the world has been steadfast in its support for Turkey. Our hearts go out for the families of the victims of the attack.
May God have peace on the souls of the lost ones and may he ease the pain of the victim’s families.
