As Sri Lankan Christians mark four years since the Easter Sunday bombings which killed 261 people, the local Church continues to allege a cover-up and seek justice by calling for a UN-led international investigation, according to Fr. Julian Patrick Perera.

“We consider that finding justice and revealing the truth is a national service that we can do to our country, because we are a minority religion in Sri Lanka.”Fr. Julian Patrick Perera, a secretary to the legal team of the Archdiocese of Colombo, offered that assessment of the local Church’s efforts to find and prosecute the perpetrators of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.

On 21 April 2019, terrorist bombers attacked two Catholic churches, an evangelical Christian church, and three luxury hotels, as well as a housing complex and a guest house.The eight suicide bombers, whom the government alleged were linked to the so-called Islamic State, killed 261 people in the coordinated attacks.Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, has questioned the government’s narrative of attacks and has consistently called for an international investigation.

Allegations of a cover up

In an interview with Vatican News to mark the fourth anniversary of the tragedy, Fr. Perera lamented the lack of justice for the Easter Sunday bombings, saying there has been “no proper investigation completed on the whole issue”.

He noted there appears to be evidence of a cover-up, pointing to the removal of several key investigators from the case.

“There is also a kind of an eyewash lawsuit that has been brought against about 25 members of the so-called terrorist movement. But those charges are very surface level,” said Fr. Perera, adding that law experts believe that a case consisting of 23,000 charges can never be credibly brought to trial.

“How can you bring 23,000 charges into question and cross-examine so many hundreds of people?” he wondered. “So, you can see that there is a very clear cover up in the first place.”