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ON EASTER SUNDAY, Sri Lanka was rocked by a wave of coordinated bombings that killed more than 300 people at churches and hotels.
Most of the victims were Sri Lankans and at least 31 foreign nationals were also among those killed.
Three bomb blasts took place at churches while three others hit the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotels in Colombo.
My relatives were due to have breakfast in the Cinnamon – our family’s favourite hotel. Thankfully they changed their plans.
Too Close to Home
As a Sri Lankan, now naturalised Irish citizen living in Dublin for nearly 20 years, I am accustomed to the familiar terror of hearing of senseless acts of violence from my home country. But after a decade of peace, I had hoped that our troubles were behind us.
Although I was born in Italy to Sri Lankan parents, I lived in Sri Lanka’s largest city Colombo from 1984 to 1995, from the age of 12 until I was 21.
During this time I lost family and friends to terrorist attacks and witnessed the massacre of innocent lives. Just like other children growing up in war-torn countries I tried to navigate my teenage years amidst curfews, army checkpoints and sporadic bomb attacks.
I attended mass every Sunday with my grandparents and parents at St Anthony Shrine, which is one of the churches that were targeted in the attacks.
The Cinnamon Grand Hotel, a luxury hotel that was targeted, is our family’s favourite hotel, I stayed in it less than a year ago on my last visit.
My uncle and aunt, as well as my cousin with his wife and their 11-year-old daughter, were meant to have breakfast there on Easter morning.
Thankfully they opted to go for lunch instead and escaped the attack. The manager who took their reservation died in the bomb blast.
Two further explosions were reported later as the police searched for suspects.
This is by far the deadliest attack that the country has experienced since the end of the civil war in 2009. That war lasted 26 years and was between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers.
Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency, and yesterday was declared a national day of mourning with mass funerals taking place for the victims.
Police have made more than 40 arrests and have enlisted the assistance of Interpol, the FBI and the Australian Police in an effort to contain the situation and find the people responsible.
Celebration of Diversity of Religion and Ethnicity
The population of Sri Lanka is 22 million people and the country is home to four major religions, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian.
The vast majority of the time the four religions live side by side and all join in to mark all religious celebrations and festivals.
It is very common to hear Buddhist monks chanting in the Buddhist temple while hearing the Muslim call for prayer and the chiming of bells from the local church and the Hindu temple simultaneously.
Sri Lanka is also home to multiple ethnicities, the Sinhalese and Tamil being the major ones and the Burghers and the Malays being smaller groups. Sinhalese, Tamil and English are the official languages with all public signage displayed in all three languages.
Although this all sounds idyllic, not all diversity is celebrated as homosexuality is yet to be decriminalised.
This was the major reason why I was forced to emigrate in search of a country like Ireland where I could live an authentic life as a proud lesbian.
Sri Lanka and the Media
There have been numerous reports that the Sri Lankan Government was aware of an impending attack and just last January the authorities apprehended a group with 100kg of explosives and 90 detonators.
Like many Sri Lankans, I am outraged that the government didn’t take these signs seriously enough to warn the public.
I am concerned that warning signs may have been intentionally ignored in the interest of preserving Sri Lanka’s image of being a perfect tropical holiday destination.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Sri Lanka also issued a ban on social media which is a painful reminder of its long history of media censorship when journalists including my cousin, Richard de Zoysa, were murdered by Sri Lankan death squads.
Richard was killed 29 years ago because he refused to compromise his integrity as a journalist.
Press freedom has been a long-standing problem in Sri Lanka as journalists are often forced to exercise self-censorship to survive.
Although my career as a journalist began in Colombo it was short lived as I was advised to conceal my sexuality if I wanted to have a successful career.
History of Conflict Repeating Itself
The civil war ended in 2009 after a large-scale operation by the Sri Lankan army that defeated the Tamil Tigers.
According to the United Nations in the last stage of the war, there were as many as 40,000 people killed.
Like many Sri Lankans, I was shocked and ashamed by how the civil war ended – as many of the issues around the systematic prejudice and discrimination that led to the civil war remain unaddressed to this day.
There was no meaningful resolution found to the conflict. Instead there was just horrific and unimaginable violence that resulted in the massacre of thousands of civilians.
As I write this article I am struggling to keep my hope for peace alive in Sri Lanka, as well as in Ireland due to the recent shocking killing of the journalist, Lyra McKee.
“We need to have conversations. Difficult conversations,” Lyra said in her TEDx Stormont Women Talk – because without them meaningful resolutions and lasting peace will not be possible.
I hope and pray for my people in Sri Lanka during this challenging time – that instead of resorting to more violence they will find the courage to have those difficult conversations and pave the way for an inclusive, compassionate and peaceful nation.
Dil Wickremasinghe is the Co-Founder of Insight Matters, psychotherapy, counselling and wellness services and podcaster of “Insight Matters – Inspiring Change in Self & Society”.
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Well balanced and non judgemental article.. if only everyone could think and act that way…
What we need is a Whole System that works,
It’s time to drain the sespool of leaders and show them with your VOTES , who are the real bosses , they work for us ,NOT the other way around
@Karllye kripton: the politicians don’t decide what drugs get approved, to do so would drive healthcare to a dystopian system to be decided by public opinion rather than expert medical professionals, so I’m unsure how votes would achieve your desired effect
@Karllye kripton: that’ll make a huge difference .. not .. you cant vote out any of the leaders in THE HSE .. they are employees if the state …
@Vocal Outrage: Unfortunately this isn’t true. Look at Orkambi. Deemed to be not cost effective by the NCPE. Recommended not for reimbursement. Simon Harris decides to fund it. Despite this money coming at the expense of various other cost effective treatments. I wish the general public were fully aware of what a self serving decision this was, and how much it has cost the HSE, for a very marginal benefit, when you look at the overall CF population. But it looks good in the press.
@Peter Wheen: my point exactly, when you make populist medical policy decisions like that, against professional advice, then other parts of the service will suffer. I guess I was referring to how it should be
My mum was seen by many consultants in a private hospital in Dublin for pains that eventually had her bed ridden. After 4 months of various tests and different pain killers she took very ill and rushed to hospital. A simple CT scan not done previuosly by any consultant showed she was riddled with cancer and died the next day. My trust in private hospitals was questioned from that day onwards..
I remember my granfather saying he was on 9 pills a day in his late 70s. Now a day most fit 30 year olds are putting 4 tablets into themselves
Something is definitely wrong if half a million people are on anti depressiants. It’s all a scam
@Tom Padraig: Perhaps rather than blaming the medication, you should consider the circumstances that lead to people requiring antidepressants as opposed to labelling it all a scam.
@Philip Kavanagh: He is not wrong. One example would be the number of teens on Meds to treat their “ADHD” because they once told mummy to fork orf after eating a bag of skittles and downing five cans of red bull.
@Philip Kavanagh: As evidenced by the experience of those involved in the Air Corps chemical scandal, many if not most people on ADs do not need them. However they are the current quick “fix” for clinicians and a very lucrative one for industry.
The overprescription of ADs is a scourge & a scandal. The increase in anxiety & depression is being driven by what we eat, what we drink and what we breath.
ADs are one of the current unsustainable answers to an already unsustainable problem, counselling is the other.
Treating depression & anxiety along with so called suicide prevention is a fooking industry at this point.
@Ronan Sexton: He is wrong. Some people need antidepressants for a specific period, others will be on them for life. Like for most illnesses, medication is only one of the range of treatments. To write it all of as a scam is dangerous and stupid.
@Chemical Brothers: Back up your unsubstantiated claim with actual sources that “many if not most people on ADs do not need them”.
@Philip Kavanagh: The numbers on antidepressants in Ireland is simply staggering. To believe that all these people actually have mental health illnesses is simply beyond belief.
We are mass medicating a massive portion of our population out of ignorance.
I suppose the matter of not wasting billions on whats planned to be a multi tier health system for our kids in the supposed “best new hospital in the world (if you are wealthy and can afford expensive health insurance)”, would allow us buy a couple of billions more worth of drugs.
Can I ask if Dr. O’Connor believes, like a recently published Cork based gastroenterologist, that IBS is a psychosomatic illness?
“More than 50 per cent of my outpatients have symptoms caused by psychosomatic conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, which cannot be elucidated or cured by the molecular biologists”
@Chemical Brothers: wow, a little off topic, no?
@James Brady: Not really IBS and the like is overwhelming Gastroenterology Depts in all our hospitals. If all Gastroenterologists think IBS is psychosomatic then the problem is not being dealt with properly and is a further drain on the same pot of resources.
It stands to reason that if spending on expensive drugs means less money for other hospital spending then if something else is using up funds like for huge numbers of unnecessary “arse covering” endoscopy that then further eats into the same pool of money.
@Chemical Brothers: It’s not unnecessary. It is necessary to investigate or you can’t say with confidence that pt has IBS as opposed to something more serious. IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. If gastroenterologist is arranging endoscopy to investigate, they are likely looking to rule out conditions with overlapping presentations such as coeliac, crohns, ulcerative colitis. When all investigations are negative and the symptoms are still of concern, it is not unreasonable to attempt treatments which have evidence of working in these cohorts of patients such as specific diets etc.
@Stephen Chaney: Thanks for reply. Considering the large percentage of those diagnosed with IBS in outpatient clinics would an approach of trying diet first rather than an expensive, invasive, unpleasant endoscopy procedure with attendant risk be a better course of action?
Is the endoscopy first approach being driven more by fear of missing a cancer and being sued for same rather than what may be a simpler approach?
Genuinely just asking, have had cameras both ends with nothing sinister found but have subsequently had success with dietary measures but not necessarily measures that consultants are familiar with.
This is one of the best articles offering a comprehensive and fair analysis on our Health System, I can’t fault it. This should be framed.
Agree with Dr O’Connor – balanced views sustained by experience. Have been treated well in both systems, though public AnE requires patience.
In the UK there are set targets for delivery – something like Cancer surgery within 4 weeks maximum. If we set our public hospitals targets and then offered the patient free private care if not met that would focus minds on efficiencies.
@Pat Redmond: or just pay hospitals (and drs etc) per procedure. The countries with the shortest waiting lists are those with systems based on insurance where hospitals are paid like that.
he makes some valid points, but the chances of Ireland producing a high quality low cost health service are slim. We don’t do low cost for things like that in this country.
Great article and much that needs to be said- just would like to suggest another option- we need to recognise that the price tag on patented medicines bears no relationship to the cost of bringing the drug to market- but is the price unilaterally set by Pharma and is based on the maximum profit it can bring to its shareholders- which for life saving or life enhancing drugs is very high indeed. We need to bring some balance of power to the negotiating table to prevent monopoly abuse- ultimately by replacing the monopoly with an alternative incentive such as grants for R&D.
Off topic.
have your say