N. P. Upadhyaya Kathmandu: I am certain that my Sri Lankan friends who served their nation as Sri Lankan official representative to Nepal beginning Ambassador Pamela J Deen, Ambassador Grace Ashirwatham, Charge de’ affaires Karunadasa and Ambassador Amralal Sumith Nakandala are all safe and sound in Colombo. I also hope the former SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Nihal Rodrigo too is in a good shape.
The distinguished Sri Lankan envoys posted in Nepal at different intervals of time were very close to me personally and to my newspaper The Telegraph Weekly and its online portal.
My regards to them all and wish them a healthy and prosperous life.
In a nasty turn of event, Sunday, April 21, 2019 explosions rocked Sri Lanka that not only took hundreds of lives but also shook the entire world.
The series of explosions in three different cities were mainly targeted against the Christian community and foreign tourists.
The unfortunate event brought back horrifying memories of the violence that had plagued Sri Lanka during its brutal civil war beginning 1983 which lasted till 2009.
Needless to say, the Sri Lankan Civil War clearly had both overt and covert support of the Indian Government. (Read the book by J. N Dixit: My South Block Years).
I remember the then Sri Lankan Ambassador His Excellency Hewage rejoicing the defeat of India nurtured terrorist outfit The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in his country had personally told me at the Annapurna Hotel in Kathmandu that now onward his fellow countrymen shall live in peace as the civil war was over once and for all.
Ambassador Hewage in the year 2009 had organized a press meet at the Hotel to inform the Nepali media on how the civil war had come to an end in Sri Lanka.
While briefing the Nepali media, Ambassador Hewage also hinted towards the country that was providing support to the Sri Lankan terrorists but in an indirect manner.
In my private conversations too other Sri Lankan representatives in Nepal had made me clear of India’s support to the LTTE.
In a dramatic manner in the year 2009 while India was holding general elections, the then Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajpaksha with the meaningful support from both China and Pakistan had brought an end to the Hindu Terror Outfit, LTTE. The Sri Lankan Tamils with the support from their northern neighbor were fighting for a separate state.
Rumors had it that Nepal Maoists while in Delhi were also in contact with the Tamil Tigers through the kind courtesy of the Indian regime.
As far as I recall, India’s sending of the Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka at time of President Jayawardene was not taken in a good taste by the Sri Lankans to the extent that the then Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premdasa sometime later even declared that his country could not become the venue for the SAARC Summit until foreign forces (the IPKF) stationed in Colombo did not return to their home country.
India felt an embarrassment and possibly the insult was noted with care by Delhi.
This story perhaps should give some inkling into the possible Indian link into the fresh Colombo blast that took somewhere around three hundred precious lives. The link could be established if the readers understand the Indian trickery more so when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is ruling India which not only possess hatred for the Muslims but also for the Christians as well.
Nepal is the continual victim of the Indian hegemony simply because of our impotent and Indo-pendent political men ruling this country after Shyam Saran gifted Republican order.
However, the Indian media as usual shifts the blame somewhere else where it benefits the nation politically.
Not sure but Nepal’s high placed sources who have been taking note of the regional events claim that if India is around then Colombo must watch the Indian maneuverings closely and try to establish links with the fresh bombings.
In sum, the Sri Lankan civil war was an India sponsored one that troubled the Island nation for well over there decades or so and saw the killings of thousands of innocent Sri Lankans.
The bombings could well have been the probable answer of a section of militant mindset of the Indian intelligence agency, RAW men in Delhi to Prime Minister Premdasa’s determination not to allow the SAARC Summit to be held in Colombo until the Indian peace keeping force was inside the nation.
In the meanwhile, Sri Lanka is to conduct a house-to-house search of the entire country to root out terrorists in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings, the Sri Lankan president said Friday.
Fear of fresh violence remains though but a sweeping hunt for people linked to the April 21 attack continues to shake the country from within.
Seeking to deflect blame for the government’s failure to act on warnings that suicide bombings were imminent, President Maithripala Sirisena said that officials had not told him of the threat, and vowed a “total reorganization” of Sri Lanka’s security apparatus.
The Sri Lankan government on Monday, a day after the main attack, blamed a little-known radical Islamist group for the devastating Easter Sunday suicide bombings that killed more than 300 people. Officials said the group, which had not carried out any serious attacks before, had received help from an international terrorist organization?
This ghastly incident has come well within a month or so when a similar shooting had rocked the Christchurch Noori mosque in New Zealand. Friday March 22, 2019.
The shooting was engineered by an Australian national Brenton Tarrant (28) which had taken several lives of the people which comprised mostly of the Muslims.
The New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden in all her modesty exhibited her inner pains while making an official statement at the parliament. Her speech was appreciated the world over.
Some religious extremists, albeit the domestic ones as stated earlier, with possible foreign links are being rumored to have engineered this bombing in the Island nation.
One spine chilling news has emanated from Colombo which states that the intelligence services in India had told Sri Lanka in advance of the threat in early April, some officials in Colombo said.
One of the warnings was so specific that it even gave a list of suspects. In the run up to the most holy day in the Christian calendar, the warnings seemed to increase in frequency and urgency.
Question could be asked as to why the Indian agency the RAW- which claims that it had the inkling of such a likely bomb blast in Colombo did not take into confidence the Sri Lankan security officials who could have averted the ghastly bombing and that too which had been targeted to a particular community with which, apart from Muslims, Indian Hindu terror machine possesses abundant hatred.
Mind it this Hindu terror machine tentatively controlled by India’s incumbent PM Modi remained almost tight lipped when New Zealand Christchurch Noori mosque was made a killing venue when an Australian Brenton Tarrant (28) fired at the men who were busy with their prayer works on that day.
Modi’s India took this New Zealand shooting as a normal incident simply because it was not an incident which took the lives of the Hindus for whom PM Modi’s machine works round the clock. Those who lost their precious lives were mostly the Muslims in Wellington that Friday in March.
It is not a secret now that PM Modi hates both Muslims and Christians.
Nepal’s Hindus not only understand the value of religious tolerance but practice it too.
Writes Adam Garrie for Eurasia /Future dated April 22, 2019, that “India has a long history of seeking to manipulate the power balance in Sri Lanka in order to turn the country into something of an Indian protectorate.
These attempts have notably been resisted by contemporary Sri Lankan leaders who seek an independent foreign policy that aims at securing win-win friendship not only with India but crucially, also with China and Pakistan.
The Hambantota Port in which China has a greater say now has distanced Delhi with Colombo. Yet Delhi is trying to seduce Colombo. Coercive diplomacy at times is also used.
The Maldives now has tentatively an India friendly President.
It would not be out of place to put on record that when the Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena had told his ministers in a closed-door cabinet meeting in 10 October 2018 that the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency, was planning to assassinate him, so had stated the The Hindu daily-an Indian paper last year.
So how Colombo could summarily reject this probability that the RAW may have not engineered this bombing as well?
However, diplomacy demands silence at least when it comes to criticize the regional goliath. At least Colombo shall now see Delhi with suspicion.
The RAW in collaboration with the Nepal Maoists based in Delhi killed some seventeen thousand innocent Nepali people during the so called people’s war. But the democratic world community ignored the wanton killings of Nepali population by the Maoists who were then residing in India. The Hague Tribunal is still silent. Why?
Is India shielding Prachanda and Dr. BR Bhattarai from being summoned by The Hague Tribunal?
However the fresh bombings in Colombo and Wellington have attracted so much attention of the world people and the champions who voice against terror and violence but why the same world community kept a stoic silence over the Killings in Nepal then by the Maoists? Was it not an act of terrorism? What could be its justification?
Nevertheless, the entire Nepali population is with the aggrieved people and the government of Sri Lanka. Our sympathy goes to the bereaved families.
The Dawn editorial dated April 23 sums up the challenging task of terrorism in a brilliant manner by stating that “Challenging as it may be, all countries, regardless of their social, cultural and religious outlook, need to take firm, coordinated action against terrorism — especially at a time when hatred and extremism are outstripping all measures to maintain peace”.
Last but not the least, the Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe April 26, 2019, while talking to the Hindustan Times (Colombo) has said that since Pakistan has fully supported Sri Lanka’s war on terror (so) If necessary, we will seek their help to trace the terrorists and eliminate them. I see this tragic event as further strengthening the trust that exists between our countries and increasing cooperation.
The Sri Lanka’s state minister of defense said Tuesday that the Easter attack on churches, hotels and other sites was “carried out in retaliation” for the shooting massacre at two New Zealand mosques last month, as the Islamic State group sought to claim responsibility for the attack.
It may or may not be close to the truth, say Nepal’s security analysts.
In New Zealand attack, one Australian youth has been nabbed who killed several Muslims, however, the attack in Colombo has targeted the Christians only and thus a possible link is very difficult to be established that it could have been an act in retaliation to the attack on the Muslims in Wellington.
The comments by Ruwan Wijewardene came shortly before the Islamic State group asserted it was responsible for the bombings in and outside of Colombo that killed over 320 people. But neither Wijewardene nor IS provided evidence to immediately support their claims, and authorities previously blamed a little-known Islamic extremist group in the island nation for the attack.
“The preliminary investigations have revealed that what happened in Sri Lanka was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch,” state minister of defence Ruwan Wijewardene told parliament, writes the CBS news April 23, 2019.
It was unclear what led the Minister Wijewardene to base his assessment on, and later on Tuesday Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was more guarded, saying that it was “possible” there was a connection between the two attacks.
However, the investigations are in full swing and it is yet to pin point as to which group targeted this attack in Colombo last Sunday.
In a very surprising announcement, the fiery Islamic cleric who allegedly masterminded the Easter Sunday terror attacks in Sri Lanka has been confirmed dead, the country’s president has informed the Sri Lankan population.
President Maithripala Sirisena announced that Zahram Hashim has died at the Shangri-La hotel in the country’s capital, Colombo, reported the BBC on Friday.
That’s all.