On April 21st, 2019 eight explosions happened all through the island of Sri Lanka almost simultaneously. The explosions specifically targeted the West via luxury hotels and Christian churches where the Easter Sunday services were being celebrated.
The number of casualties eventually reached 253 and (unusually) 48 hours later, the Islamic State claimed the authorship of the attack in collaboration with members of a local extremist organization, the National Thowheeth Jama’ath.
The socio-political and emotional chaos provoked by a massacre of this magnitude was as expected as unwanted, ranging from the unbelievable links politicians wanted to find to explain the disaster to the high number of scapegoats searched, found and used as a mere distraction strategy to give citizens the fake impression of having assumed responsibilities. Then came the questions of the inaction of a government that had been previously warned of the radical extremist behaviour of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath by the Muslim local community several times in the last years as well as the information about the possibility of a terrorist attack by the intelligence services. But it was too late, way too late.
