Crammed into buses organized by community leaders and police, hundreds of Pakistani Muslims left the their homes fearing for their safety after threats of revenge from locals
Muslims in Negombo, Sri Lanka, are relocated by bus to another town for their safety on April 24, 2019, three days after the Easter bombings. Until this week, Sri Lanka didn’t have much history of Christian-Muslim violence.As mourners buried the remains of Christian worshippers killed by the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, hundreds of Muslim refugees fled Negombo on the country’s west coast where communal tensions have flared in recent days.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks, yet despite Islamic State being a Sunni jihadist group, many of the Muslims fleeing Negombo belong to the Ahmadi community, who had been hounded out of Pakistan years ago after their sect was declared non-Muslim.Farah Jameel, a Pakistani Ahmadi, said she had been thrown out of her house by her landlord.
“We have to search houses if people suspect,” said Herath BSS Sisila Kumara, the officer in charge at Katara police station, where 35 of the Pakistanis that gathered at the mosque were taken into police custody for their own protection, before being sent to an undisclosed location. Channa Repunjaya, 49, was at home when he heard about the blast at St Sebastian’s. His wife, Chandralata Dassanaike and nine-year-old daughter Meeranhi both died.
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