Parts of Sri Lanka were yesterday under indefinite curfew and social media banned after a man was killed by a sword-wielding mob in an escalating anti-Muslim backlash following the Easter terror attacks.
Violence broke out late on Monday, three weeks after Muslim extremist bombings killed 258 people, with mobs carrying out arson attacks, including one involving about 2,000 people who vandalized a mosque, witnesses said.
A nationwide curfew imposed overnight was raised yesterday morning except for the North-Western Province (NWP), where police said a 45-year-old Muslim man was killed in his carpentry shop by a crowd carrying swords.
Photo: AFP
Elsewhere in the province north of Colombo rampaging mobs, who outnumbered police and security forces, set fire to Muslim-owned shops, vandalized homes and smashed windows, furniture and fittings inside several mosques.
In the adjoining Gampaha District, men on motorbikes led arson attacks in the town of Minuwangoda, 45km north of Colombo, residents said.
“It was the men on motorbikes who started the violence. They were from out of town,” an owner of an electronic goods store said by telephone. “After they started smashing Muslim shops and throwing gasoline bombs, the locals joined in.”
He said that police and security forces appeared to be overwhelmed and that by the time troops fired in the air to disperse the mobs, it was too late for many of the shops targeted.
A pasta factory owned by a Muslim businessman was destroyed after unidentified attackers threw burning tires into the facility, reducing it to ashes.
“There were security forces outside, but they could not stop the attack that happened during curfew hours,” Diamond Pasta Private Ltd owner Ashraf Jifthy said by telephone.
“Police and security forces also did not do anything to put out the fire,” Jifthy said. “Three of my Muslim workers were injured while trying to escape from the burning factory.”
A mosque in Minuwangoda was also stoned. In the NWP, attackers systematically targeted mosques for two days, local clerics said.
In the town of Kinyama, two mosques were smashed as the outnumbered armed police and troops stood by.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the