Catholic and Muslim leaders joined thousands of protestors who gathered in Negombo last afternoon (9), calling for justice for the victims of the Easter Sunday bombings and for the Government to resign due to the ongoing economic crisis.

The protest was led by Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith of the Catholic Church.

Addressing the gathering, the Chief Moulavi of the Negombo Mosque said that no force could divide the united people of Negombo.

“I came here today because our children deserve a better future. Today, they are languishing in queues, waiting for petrol and cooking gas. Today the communities of Negombo have united. No force can divide us now. The people of Negombo say in one voice for the Government to go home, they want all the 225 in Parliament to go,” Salman Moulavi of the Negombo Mosque told the protestors who had gathered.

The Archbishop highlighted delays in seeking justice for the victims of the Easter Sunday Bombings, stating that the current crisis was a punishment for the misdeeds of the country’s leaders.

“There is no point in grabbing power if they don’t know how to use it properly. That is why the country is in this terrible state right now with our economy destroyed and civil unrest. We have been asking continuously for over two years to give justice to the victims of the Easter attacks. We kept asking to find out who was behind these attacks and to implement the recommendations of the Presidential Commission that inquired into the attacks. But even to date hardly any of those recommendations have been implemented. Instead the Muslim people of this country have been blamed while those who are actually responsible have been protected. This current crisis is punishment for these failures and misdeeds of our country’s leadership,” he said.

“What has happened to the law of the land? It is being abused and the Attorney General has become the stooge of the Government. They hoodwinked the people and came into power. The Pandora Papers revealed how this Government and its cronies have stolen money and assets of this land and shipped them out of the country – more than $ 100 million. Some of those cronies have now fled the country,” the Archbishop charged.

“We can rebuild this country. We ask all the citizens of Sri Lanka to come together and ask these crooks to go,” he stressed.

—–report in The Sunday Morning, Apr 10, 2022