Opinion: Sri Lanka is burning — again
Government troopers in Mullaittivu, Sri Lanka, on May 17. By Amarnath Amarasingam and Lisa Fuller May 17 at 12:35 PM Amarnath Amarasingam is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and the co-editor of “Sri Lanka: The Struggle for Peace in the Aftermath of War.” Lisa Fuller is a Sri Lanka-based freelance journalist. She previously worked as civilian peacekeeper and senior staff member for Nonviolent Peaceforce in conflict zones in Sri Lanka, Iraq and South Sudan.
In the past, relatively minor events would ignite long-simmering economic and nationalist anxieties — and lead to wildly disproportionate violence. But this time, the trigger was different. This week, rioters brutally attacked Muslims. Some videos show horrifying celebrations of the violence. In one particularly graphic video, police appear to comply with rioters’ instructions to drag a severely injured man along the road rather than take him to the hospital in a trishaw.
What is particularly disturbing about the riots this week is that the government has both failed to stem anti-Muslim violence and have made decisions that implicitly encouraged hatred. The government then failed to effectively stop the mob attacks. Local residents reported that the mobs roamed freely for hours without an apparent response from government forces. Residents of some towns said some police officers genuinely tried to control the mobs, but were grossly outnumbered: For example, a resident of the town of Kobeigane said that residents there saw fewer than 30 police officers deployed to protect them from a mob of an estimated 600 people.
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