Ann Seymour Vergara

A mother hands her son a candle at the vigil in Union Square for the victims of the Easter Sunday bombing in Sri Lanka. Generations of families from the Sri Lankan diaspora gathered together to mourn as a community. Photo by Ann Seymour

The crowd that assembled at Union Square Park in Manhattan on Tuesday night represented a diversity many New Yorkers may not have recognized. Christians, Muslims, Tamils, Sinhalese, Buddhists, Burghers, and Hindus had come together to hold a vigil for the victims of bombings that rippled across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, hitting a church and three luxury hotels in Colombo, and two churches in Negombo and Batticaloa. The bombings claimed 253 lives. As hundreds of Sri Lankans and their allies mourned, a veil of silence was cast over the crowd. 

This year is the ten-year anniversary of the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Despite a few outbreaks of violence, including a series of anti-Muslim riots in 2018, Sri Lanka’s past decade has been relatively peaceful compared to the preceding years of conflict. The Easter Sunday bombings were unprecedented in scale. They primarily targeted Christian victims and are thought to have been carried out by a local Muslim extremist group, Islamist National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ). Though the two religious groups have not had a history of tension within Sri Lanka, those at the vigil echoed that violence was familiar to the country.

“The violation was something that rings clearly to so many people. It has affected all communities, even though Christians were the group targeted,” said Yalini Dream, a Christian Tamil who works as a consultant and performing artist and emceed Tuesday’s vigil. Although Christians comprise 7.4% of the Sri Lankan population, many of Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious communities have been the objects of sectarian attacks.

After Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, gained independence from colonial British powers in 1948, representatives of the majority Sinhalese Buddhist population were elected to government. In 1953, the Sri Lankan Prime Minister introduced the Sinhala Only Act, which established Sinhala as the nation’s official language. The act disenfranchised the Tamil-speaking minority population, who were suddenly unable to access jobs and education because of the language barrier. Peaceful protests were met with violent suppression. Tension mounted between ethnic Sinhalese and Tamil separatists, culminating in a devastatingly violent, 26-year war that led to over 150,000 deaths, many at the hands of the government, and displaced countless more.

Mourners in Union Square in Manhattan gathered on the evening of April 23 to light candles in remembrance of the victims of the bombings in Sri Lanka. Photo  by Ann Seymour

Dream grew up as part of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora that fled the violence of the civil war. She, along with other organizers and vigil attendants, voiced concerns that Sri Lanka’s fractured past continues to haunt its population.

“This kind of violence has bred more violence for too long, and we want that to stop,” said Dream, who was raised in a Christian household. She counts herself as a part of a movement that looks to affirm life instead of carrying on a legacy of brutality. “No one wants to see that again,” she said.

The activists who organized the vigil are working to unite different religious groups and ethnicities in hopes of changing this culture of violence. For the Wednesday vigil, organizers put out a call through social media to honor those lost on Easter Sunday, not through the prayers of a specific religion, but with flowers and candles. They chose Union Square because of its central location, accessible to the Tamil and Sinhala communities from Queens and Staten Island. The speakers represented Sri Lanka’s diversity — Tamil, Buddhist, Christian. All of the speakers were women. Organizer Thiviya Navaratnam counted this as a sign of progress. “We’re the next generation,” she said. 

Thanu Yakupitiyage, who works as the US Communications Manager at 350, a global climate justice organization, helped organize and spoke at the vigil. As she addressed the crowd gathered around a sea of flickering candles, rain began to fall. “The sky is literally crying with us today,” she said. No one took shelter from the soft spring shower.

After the speeches, a harpist performed and led the group in singing a traditional Tamil funeral song.

Musician Elsz played the harp for the mourners gathered in Union Square on April 23 for a vigil for the victims of the bombing in Sri Lanka. Photo by Ann Seymour

After the vigil, emotions were mixed. Many felt heartened, but worried about what lies ahead. Kartik Amarnath, who is Tamil, said he felt “reassured [that] people in the community are paying a watchful eye to what is going to happen.” Yet, Amarnath is concerned about a backlash, and how fear might be manipulated for political advantage, both within Sri Lanka and beyond, such as promoting “particularly Islamophobic projects like the war on terror.” 

Like Dream, Amarnath believes his generation has the power to change the dynamic between Sri Lankan communities that have a history of tension. “It’s a constant dialogue that I’m invested in being a part of. Trying to shift mindsets and call out problematic ideas,” he said. “It’s tragic how fragmented we are as a community.” 

Shihana Mohamed, who works for the United Nations, explains that she, too, has  experienced that fragmentation as a Sri Lankan Muslim. She lost a family member in one of the Colombo bombings and is concerned about retaliation toward Muslims that might leave her relatives in Sri Lanka vulnerable. “I’m still in shock; my body hurts,” she said about the news on Sunday. Mohamed urged fellow Muslims to condemn the attackers, who she does not see as representative of her religion. “It’s the .0009%,” she said. “We cannot blame Muslims as a whole.”

While concern over reprisals weighed on some minds, others also held historical violence accountable. Yakupitiyage, a member of the Sinhala Buddhist majority that makes up 75% of the population of Sri Lanka, lists Sinhalese nationalism as one of the factors contributing to the violence today. “Some people don’t see it as connected, but I do. When a government for so long has divided people, and has not protected the rights of minorities, this is what happens,” she said of the Easter attacks. 

Both she and fellow organizer Navaratnam, who is Tamil, stressed that the only way their communities can move forward is to address their country’s historical wounds. “We’re here to mourn and grieve together. And we want to show unity. But we can’t do any of that without holding the state accountable,” Navaratnam said. Navaratnam is part of People for Equality and Relief in Lanka, an NGO that advocates for the human rights of Tamils in Northeast Sri Lanka. The group includes individuals from both sides of the sectarian divide that fueled the Sri Lankan civil war and consider the diversity instrumental in healing the rift. 

As members of the Sri Lankan diaspora rely on one another to build a new future, they’re also supported by fellow New Yorkers outside of the community. “When we were setting up the vigil, two young girls came up and asked us what we were doing. They couldn’t have been more than 10,” organizer Amanda Yogendran described. After explaining what happened, the girls returned with flowers. “For me, that was one of the most moving moments of the vigil because it reminded me how we all share feelings of grief and loss,” Yogendran said. “And in the act of sharing those moments, we can all feel a little lighter.”

In Colombo, too, community heals. “In the days since the Easter Sunday attacks, nothing has been quite as alienating as the inability to go out and meet people, or take one’s mind off the constant stream of terrible news,” Vidya Balachander, an Indian journalist who resides in Colombo, said over an email. “Hope hinges on human connection — and fear has made those interactions infinitely harder.”

“Today, we met a few family friends for dinner before the curfew kicked in — laughter and small talk have never felt so important,” she concluded.