The United Nations on Tuesday urged Sri Lanka to deliver concrete results after years of inquiries into the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners.
Marc-Andre Franche, the UN’s top envoy in the country, said survivors and the families of victims were still waiting for answers despite multiple investigations and renewed pledges from the government that took office in September 2024.
“Public commitments by the government to pursue justice are important and must be welcomed,” Franche said at a remembrance service in Colombo on the seventh anniversary of the attacks. “But what matters now is results.”
Three churches and three luxury hotels were targeted simultaneously on April 21, 2019, in the deadliest single day of violence on the island since the end of the civil war. Several investigations, including a parliamentary probe, have pointed to the involvement of state intelligence units, but no definitive finding on the masterminds has been delivered.
In October 2021, state prosecutors indicted 25 people as alleged co-conspirators. The trial is ongoing. Policing took a new turn in February with the arrest of retired Major General Suresh Sallay, the former head of the State Intelligence Service, who is being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He denies the allegations.
At a commemoration ceremony at St. Anthony’s Church in Kochchikade, where 51 people were killed, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, said political interference had obstructed the search for truth.
The UN intervention adds external pressure to a domestic accountability process that opposition SLPP leaders, including Namal Rajapaksa, have accused of being politicised by the current administration.
