GUEST BLOG: Bryan Bruce – The horror of Sri Lanka violence

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Terrible news this morning .More than 280 innocent people have been murdered and at least 500 hundred injured in a series of 8 simultaneous bomb blasts at 3 churches and 3 luxury hotels on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka.

The BBC is reporting that three police officers were also killed during the arrest of 7 suspects. A further 17 arrests have since been made .

With the Christchurch Mosque killings still raw in our own nation’s memory our hearts go out to the families and friends of the dead and injured.

At this stage no one has apparently claimed responsibility for the attack but there is little doubt that it is an act of extremism .

While putting a label on such horrific acts doesn’t explain them, it does help us to see how dangerous fundamentalist beliefs of any sort can be whether they happen in New Zealand, Sri Lanka ,Somalia, Egypt or again just last week in Northern Ireland.

It also reminds us that hatred knows no colour, race or religion.

If we are to have any hope of defusing it in our species we need to put a lot more resource into understanding what drives some people to do commit such terrible acts of violence.

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Because currently we know more about the dark side of the moon than we do about the dark side of humanity.

Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.

17 COMMENTS

    • it’s an Islamic Jihadist attack on Christians. Are we allowed to say that?

      I don’t know whether that is official yet or not but it would seem the most likely scenario.

      There is no doubt in my mind that social media is the driving force behind this word-wide trend. Gullible and unstable communities are being sucked in by vile rhetoric coming from both the Right and the Left. Add to that the globally spread pressures placed on societies when less than 10% own all the wealth and the the other 90% share what is left over, then you have the full recipe for such violent behaviour.

      God knows how it’s to be done, but the social media tycoons will have to be forced to conduct continuous sweeps and remove all the vile stuff before they reach the public, and individual nations will have to return to more egalitarian governance so that the fiscal pie is more equally shared.

      I don’t count religion as such as the real cause. These people are just using ancient myths and legends as a tool by which to encourage their followers to commit such horrific crimes.

    • You can say it’s an Islamic Jihadist attack on Christians when you have evidence. Until then, your comment falls into the realms of uninformed ignorance. Since 70.2% of Sri Lankans are Buddhists, 12.6% are Hindu, 9.7% are Muslim and 7.4% Christians, there are plenty of options for religious extremists. There are also other more political options such as has been seen with some frequency, up to and including interventions by external states. It would also pay to remember that until ten years ago, Sri Lanka was consumed in a long civil war against the Tamils who, in the main were Hindu – not Islamic! Perhaps now you might understand why the Sri Lankan Government have made no calls as to who is responsible.

    • ANDY

      You nailed it mate!

      The liberal/left twist and turn in their skinny jeans trying to put it down to a ‘few fanatics’ when in fact the problem is obvious: It’s Islam. These people are doing exactly what the Koran commands them to do.

  1. If we are to have any hope of defusing it in our species we need to put a lot more resource into understanding what drives some people to do commit such terrible acts of violence.

    Because currently we know more about the dark side of the moon than we do about the dark side of humanity.

    Indeed, Bryan.

    Well said.

    This is a tragedy on a colossal scale. To understand what drives this kind of mass-murder is as important as stamping it out.

    • Probably reading the Qur’an and understanding the Salafist Wahhabist literalists will go a long way to understanding the problem.

      Are we allowed to say that?

  2. You’ve called it correctly, Andy. It’s started.
    There is a code to all the numbers quoted in the Press. Look them up in Strong’s Concordance.
    Stand firm. Yah Bless

    • ISIS have already stated that this attack is revenge for the ChCh attacks (though I suspect it isn’t)

      I’m not really sure why we need some weird number system unless by stating the bleeding obvious, you are claiming that I am a wack-job conspiracy theorist

      It took about 5 seconds to claim that one lone gunman from Australia is a symptomatic of White Supremacism, yet the 35,000 Jihadist attacks since 9/11 are presumably all “lone wolf’ attacks with people who have mental health issues

      How is it that Brenton Tarrant is undergoing 3 months of mental health screening to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial, yet his attack is not deemed a mental health issue?

      I’m just asking a question or two.

      I look forward to the usual patronising sneering responses from the usual dreary suspects

    • I am now in deep shock that this is a deliberate widespread attack on Christians so I am now living in fear of my life now as I was bought up as a christian and these thugs are effectively threatening my life.

      I wish the hearts and souls of those families affected be healed by the grace of god.

      Peace will only be restored when these thugs are caught and made accountable for their crimes against all peaceful loving Christians.

      • Peaceful Christians? You mean like the US and European militaries that have left the planet awash with the deaths of millions of non-Christians? No only that, they refuse to be held accountable for war crimes they have committed along the way. Even Jesus had something to say about motes and beams….

  3. “…we need to put a lot more resource into understanding what drives some people to do commit such terrible acts of violence.” Yes.

    I have never forgotten how the Dom-Post published an editorial post 9/11 wondering what the Muslim world had against the Western World, i.e. us. The Dom-Post may have been stumped, but a group of ordinary people in my workplace discussed it at every opportunity throughout that day and we had little trouble in coming up with reasons which I think we all agreed upon and largely agreed with.

    The saddest damn thing was a respected Indian colleague coming in that morning and saying that she wanted us to know that she was not a Muslim.

    The Sri Lanka carnage is unbelievably horrific and evil.Whether the political will and skill exists to address these festering poisons and hatreds, I don’t know.

  4. Xenophobic Hysteria Chaos Cascade catalyzed by Catholic scandals and the Christchurch shooting is my opinion. As a quantum physicist

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