On 5-6 December 2021, a fact-finding team visited Batticaloa to ascertain the impact of the Easter Sunday bombings on the Christian and Muslim communities in Batticaloa two and a half years after the incident. The team was conscious of the fact that inter and intracommunity tensions in the Eastern Province, which were not dealt with after the end of the thirty-year armed conflict and were brought to the fore again by the Easter Sunday attacks, appear to have worsened existing fissures. As a result, there are new groups emerging, which have found new targets for discrimination and marginalization, thereby creating new centres of conflict and insecurity for vulnerable populations. However, while acknowledging that inter and intra-community relations in Batticaloa in the Eastern Province have to be viewed in the context of the thirty-year armed conflict which impacted and thereby complicated both, the aim of the visit was not to study inter and intra community relations generally, but to focus only on issues arising from the Easter bombings. Source: minormatters.org
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