By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake*
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 21 April 2025 (IDN) — Leaders of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka have again called for a proper investigation into the Easter attacks of six years ago. Meanwhile, a local political blame game starring Pillayan has ramped up to conceal the foreign fingerprints and geopolitical motives of the attacks.
Cover-up investigations and copious Disinformation in the corporate and social media echo chamber, as well as from national security think tanks, have all but buried the external interests evident in the design and targets of the Islamic State (ISIS), claimed Easter crime that killed hundreds in geostrategic Sri Lanka in 2019.
Earlier this year, a smokescreen ‘investigation’ headed by the redoubtable sleuth Shani Aberysekere of the Criminal Investigation Division was launched, seemingly to quiet the Church leaders and public outcry that justice be served for the victims, and the Mastermind revealed. The Cover story about Pillayan once again masked the role of foreign intelligence agencies in the Easter crime and subsequent investigations.
Yet despite and perhaps because of endless disinformation by local and foreign intelligence networks, such as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which removed the cell phones of the Easter suicide bombers, the Mastermind’s networks have become increasingly visible – also given new information and geopolitical developments in the Indian Ocean region.
Does ISIS target a Chinese Research Vessel?
The Easter suicide attacks were a complex multi-sited logistics operation that was remote-controlled and coordinated in Sri Lanka, a geostrategic island at the centre of the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka sits on some of the world’s most important energy, trade, and Submarine Data Cable Routes.
The Suicide bombers targeted a curious mix of four seaside luxury hotels and three churches, signifying a hybrid attack on the tourism-dependent economy. Simultaneously, religion was weaponised to stage a distracting “Cascade of violence”. The country’s west and east coasts were hit by an operation calculated to conceal other geopolitical targets.
Four Chinese marine scientists who were part of a research program with Sri Lanka’s National Aquatic Research Agency (NARA) were killed in the attacks at the Kingsbury Hotel, which overlooks South Asia’s busiest Port, on Easter Sunday, 2019.
Remarkably, the religiously motivated ISIS-inspired Easter bombers had targeted a Chinese Marine research mission whose ship, the Shi Yan-3, was berthed in the Colombo Port, as well as the Shangri-La hotel.
Lately, the US and India have expressed grave concern about any Chinese research ships that may visit the island. As more than 8 foreign intelligence agencies, including Australia’s ASIO and India’s RAW, arrived in the country to investigate the Easter crime, it was revealed that while both India and Saudi Arabia had advance information about the attacks, only the Indian authorities had shared the information with the Sri Lankan authorities.
Wisdom of Hindsight: New Geopolitical Economic Developments
New developments, such as the nominee’s statement for the post of US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Elizabeth K. Horst, at Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings last year, illuminate the geopolitical dimensions and international networks behind the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka.
Horst stated regarding Chinese marine research vessels: “We have huge concerns and have asked for a moratorium. We think it is in Sri Lanka’s best interests”. After the Easter attack that killed the Chinese scientists, the research mission was aborted, and the Shi-Yan 3 research ship left the Colombo Port to return to China.
Was it an accident or coincidence that a Chinese research mission was hit, given US concerns about Chinese research vessels in the Seas of Sri Lanka?
As a new hybrid economic Cold War led by the United States ramped up across the Indian Ocean, targeting Chinese assets and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for global connectivity, other geopolitical economic developments in Sri Lanka also throw retrospective light on the hybrid Easter crime.
The 2019 ISIS-claimed Easter attacks were a body blow to Sri Lanka’s tourism-dependent economy. This was followed by two years of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020-21. These Exogenous Economic Shocks, staged to “Make the Economy Scream,” set the groundwork for Sri Lanka’s first-ever Sovereign Default with rapid local currency depreciation and Lawfare by the shadowy offshore Hamilton Reserve Bank in 2022– into the waiting arms of the Washington Consensus (IMF and WB). At this time, Eurobond debt colonised Sri Lanka, losing economic sovereignty and policy autonomy to the IMF and secret Eurobond holders of Odious debt.
Other geopolitical developments such as the emergence of the I2U2, comprising India, Israel, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States, also known as the QUAD, targeting China in the highly militarized western Indian Ocean are also relevant to understand how religion was weaponized at Easter Sunday 2019, given a long history of Israel’s Mossad operating in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka where the Suicide Bombers hailed from and the mysterious Zion Church mushroomed. Moreover, recently, Zionist Chabad houses have popped up in Arugam Bay and elsewhere.
Some of the Special Forces and paramilitary groups trained by Mossad and British KMS mercenaries in the Eastern Province in the mid-1980s, on the invitation of the J.R. Jayawardena regime, to fight the Liberation Tigers (LTTE), were later implicated in the Batalanda terror and torture house networks. This was during the South American Dirty War style killings and disappearances in Southern Sri Lanka in 1988-1990, when Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) took over the northeast. Batalanda has been in the media lately, but ‘Operation Colombo’ in Santiago de Chile remains unknown.
The UAE and India are now set to build a Liquid Natural Gas power plant in strategic Trincomalee Harbour, according to an MOU inked between Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayaka and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the latter’s recent visit to Sri Lanka.
Does I2U2 signal the Arab Muslim-Zionist partnership for the New World Order in the Indian Ocean or the onset of evangelical Christianity’s biblical ‘End Times’ for Palestine? Are these the same thing? While I2U2 is said to be about the economic corporation and soft power, the question arises at this time: Is India taking Sri Lanka for a ride while being also taken for a Petrodollar-fueled ride by the U2 (UAE and USA), as Zionists and Arab Muslims (Israel and UAE) become proxy partners in crime?
Revisiting the Evidence
In the context of the precise geopolitical dimensions of the Easter attack, would it not be appropriate for the redoubtable Mr Shani Abersekere to invite the former Attorney General, Mr Dappula De Livera, who clearly stated that there was a Conspiracy behind the Easter attacks? The previous regime harassed De Livera for saying so, but perhaps he should be allowed to reveal what he had gleaned during investigations of the Easter attacks.
So too, it would be appropriate to summon then head of the Institute for National Security Studies (INS), Asanga Abeygoonesekere, who told this writer that several foreign experts from Germany and Bangladesh had informed him that a leader of such a group as Zaharan’s National Thawheed Jamat would never kill himself in the first operation. In other words, the conspirators and mastermind were at large and did not die in a Suicide attack despite FBI claims to the contrary.
A related question is: Does political correctness play a role in the impunity and immunity of promiscuous Muslim Politicians like MLAM Hizbullah of Kattankudi, in the Eastern Province, where the lead bomber Zaharan hailed from and was headquartered? Hizbullah, which had passed Saudi funds to the lead suicide bomber, Zaharan, had switched sides among all major political parties. Apprehending the no-doubt dubious Tamil Pillayan instead of Hizbullah seems like a decoy, especially since the lead bombers were Muslim and from Kattankudy.
Finally, the Pillayan story sold instead of the long-promised investigation into the Easter crime, which seems to have let the new President Anura Dissanayaka, who appointed Shani Abeysekera to the top investigator job, off the hook. Shani was parachuted in from retirement despite many questions about the adequacy of investigations conducted by the Criminal Investigation Department, which he headed. So, too, there are new questions as to how and why Mossad-linked, Zionist Chabad houses have mushroomed across the country and enjoy Sri Lanka military protection at this time.
*Dr Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a social and medical anthropologist with expertise in international development and political-economic analysis. She was a member of the International Steering Group of the North-South Institute project: “Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Aid Architecture”. [IDN-InDepthNews]
TO BE CONTINUED: A History of Cover-up Investigations and Smokescreen Commission Reports
Image source: Viva.Lanka.com
