Rebuilding Sri Lanka – Church and Children on One Week After the Terror
By Christ Daniel
The Surveyor walked inside the St. Sebastian Church, which the suicide bombing took place. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
(AP, Reuters, BBC) A week ago, there were one of the most devastating Easter for Sri Lanka Christians. Church bombings and raid that occurred and murdered 250 people, have left not just death and mourn. The bombing left some scars on the mental of the Sri Lankan. Many lives were devastated as their lives, culture, and life support were damaged after the conflict. Never thought before in life that coming to worship with families and members of the same common faith, would turn into such catastrophe. Churches and children were those that suffer most from the conflict.
Church was being rebuilt as the community struggles to move on. The bloodstained were still seen on the walls and destroyed furniture and church ornament of the St. Sebastian Church in Negombo. he statues of Jesus and the saints are still speckled with fragments of shrapnel. The smell of death is everywhere, though the bodies are long gone. Somehow, there's a beauty to St. Sebastian Cathedral, where a man calmly walked in during Easter services with a heavy backpack and blew himself up. For more than 50 years, St. Sebastian's had been the scene of weddings and baptisms, of Christmas celebrations and countless Masses. This somehow caused the church stepped into one of its dark history.
Children, however become the world and nation’s concern as they are part of the attack and not just loss of lives, but also their bad memory that was constructed out the chaotic attack. Dozens of children were the victims of the attack. Currently, seen some students went houses and schools to send prayers and lit candles to their friends that have departed. One of these victims was Sneha Savindri Fernando, that went to Easter Sunday Mass at St Sebastian's church in Negombo, with her mind was on something else entirely: her 13th birthday - which that day tragically would never come. Sneha was among many children who died when a suicide bombing occurred at the church.
The tragic scene had to be witness by these, so-called innocent generation of Sri Lanka. Having almost never in contact with gun, violence and war, that occurred on thirty years of civil war, ten years ago, these children were the new innocent generation. These children were supposed to be part of a peaceful memory of a new Sri Lanka.
One of the kid lit on the candle on the funeral of the deceased children. (Reuters/Getty Images)
As candles are lit across monuments, memorials, churches and houses of lost, a hope seemed to light back on Colombo. The series of spark of hope that never parish to the morning land. Lessons are learned, and the generations are getting tougher. Hateful that occurred may have been their dark history that they have to bear as their nations move forward. Time to stand for new hope that begins to rise at the horizon by the Tibetan mountains on each morning.
Sources:
AP: https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2019/4/26/amid-horror-sri-lanka-church-still-shows-beauty
Reuters:https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKCN1S402P-OCATP
BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48048856