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Friday, March 29 2024
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Muslim refugees flee Sri Lankan homes fearing backlash

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Colombo: As mourners buried the remains of Christian worshippers killed in the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, hundreds of Muslim refugees in western Sri Lanka have taken refuge in mosques and a police station assuming threat.

At least 253 people died in Sunday’s coordinated suicide blasts, including more than 100 Christians attending mass at St. Sebastian’s church in Negombo on the island’s west coast.

The attacks have been condemned by leaders of the country’s Muslim minority, but the community has been left in fear of a backlash.

Scores of Ahmadi Muslims who settled in Negombo after fleeing persecution in their home countries have been thrown out of their accommodation by landlords, according to officials.

“Today these refugees have become refugees again in Sri Lanka. They have been displaced for a second time,” Ruki Fernando of Inform, a Sri Lankan human rights group, told reporters.

The refugees are from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iran. Ahmadis have faced repeated attacks in these countries by hard-line Islamist groups who do not consider them to be Muslim.

Fernando said homeowners had evicted the refugees because they feared their properties would be targeted by groups seeking revenge for the bomb blasts which were carried out by extremist Islamists.

Many others have fled of their own accord, fearing for their safety.

“Because of the bomb blasts and explosions that have taken place here, the local Sri Lankan people have attacked our houses,” Adnan Ali, a Pakistani Muslim, told Reuters as he prepared to board a bus. “Right now we don’t know where we will go.”

Farah Jameel, a Pakistani Ahmadi, said she had been thrown out of her house by her landlord.
“She said ‘get out of here and go wherever you want to go, but don’t live here’,” she told Reuters, gathered with many others at the Ahmadiyya Mosque, waiting for buses to take them to a safe location.

“Some unknown people broke into their houses in Negombo and beat them,” Fernando told reporters.

He said numbers had yet to be verified but around 700 refugees were believed to have sought shelter in one Negombo mosque.

Police played down the threats to the refugees, but said they have been inundated with calls from locals casting suspicion on Pakistanis in Negombo.

“We have to search houses if people suspect,” said Herath BSS Sisila Kumara, the officer in charge at Katara police station, where 35 of the Pakistanis that gathered at the mosque were taken into police custody for their own protection, before being sent to an undisclosed location.

“All the Pakistanis have been sent to safe houses,” he said. “Only they will decide when they come back.”

Around 120 were at a police station while several hundred more were at another mosque in Gampaha, 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Negombo.

He said that dozens got on buses to leave Negombo on Wednesday but turned back after they were advised against heading to the capital Colombo over security fears.

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