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ON EASTER SUNDAY, Sri Lanka was rocked by a wave of coordinated bombings that killed more than 300 people at churches and hotels.
Most of the victims were Sri Lankans and at least 31 foreign nationals were also among those killed.
Three bomb blasts took place at churches while three others hit the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand hotels in Colombo.
My relatives were due to have breakfast in the Cinnamon – our family’s favourite hotel. Thankfully they changed their plans.
Too Close to Home
As a Sri Lankan, now naturalised Irish citizen living in Dublin for nearly 20 years, I am accustomed to the familiar terror of hearing of senseless acts of violence from my home country. But after a decade of peace, I had hoped that our troubles were behind us.
Although I was born in Italy to Sri Lankan parents, I lived in Sri Lanka’s largest city Colombo from 1984 to 1995, from the age of 12 until I was 21.
During this time I lost family and friends to terrorist attacks and witnessed the massacre of innocent lives. Just like other children growing up in war-torn countries I tried to navigate my teenage years amidst curfews, army checkpoints and sporadic bomb attacks.
I attended mass every Sunday with my grandparents and parents at St Anthony Shrine, which is one of the churches that were targeted in the attacks.
The Cinnamon Grand Hotel, a luxury hotel that was targeted, is our family’s favourite hotel, I stayed in it less than a year ago on my last visit.
My uncle and aunt, as well as my cousin with his wife and their 11-year-old daughter, were meant to have breakfast there on Easter morning.
Thankfully they opted to go for lunch instead and escaped the attack. The manager who took their reservation died in the bomb blast.
Two further explosions were reported later as the police searched for suspects.
This is by far the deadliest attack that the country has experienced since the end of the civil war in 2009. That war lasted 26 years and was between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers.
Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency, and yesterday was declared a national day of mourning with mass funerals taking place for the victims.
Police have made more than 40 arrests and have enlisted the assistance of Interpol, the FBI and the Australian Police in an effort to contain the situation and find the people responsible.
Celebration of Diversity of Religion and Ethnicity
The population of Sri Lanka is 22 million people and the country is home to four major religions, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian.
The vast majority of the time the four religions live side by side and all join in to mark all religious celebrations and festivals.
It is very common to hear Buddhist monks chanting in the Buddhist temple while hearing the Muslim call for prayer and the chiming of bells from the local church and the Hindu temple simultaneously.
Sri Lanka is also home to multiple ethnicities, the Sinhalese and Tamil being the major ones and the Burghers and the Malays being smaller groups. Sinhalese, Tamil and English are the official languages with all public signage displayed in all three languages.
Although this all sounds idyllic, not all diversity is celebrated as homosexuality is yet to be decriminalised.
This was the major reason why I was forced to emigrate in search of a country like Ireland where I could live an authentic life as a proud lesbian.
Sri Lanka and the Media
There have been numerous reports that the Sri Lankan Government was aware of an impending attack and just last January the authorities apprehended a group with 100kg of explosives and 90 detonators.
Like many Sri Lankans, I am outraged that the government didn’t take these signs seriously enough to warn the public.
I am concerned that warning signs may have been intentionally ignored in the interest of preserving Sri Lanka’s image of being a perfect tropical holiday destination.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Sri Lanka also issued a ban on social media which is a painful reminder of its long history of media censorship when journalists including my cousin, Richard de Zoysa, were murdered by Sri Lankan death squads.
Richard was killed 29 years ago because he refused to compromise his integrity as a journalist.
Press freedom has been a long-standing problem in Sri Lanka as journalists are often forced to exercise self-censorship to survive.
Although my career as a journalist began in Colombo it was short lived as I was advised to conceal my sexuality if I wanted to have a successful career.
History of Conflict Repeating Itself
The civil war ended in 2009 after a large-scale operation by the Sri Lankan army that defeated the Tamil Tigers.
According to the United Nations in the last stage of the war, there were as many as 40,000 people killed.
Like many Sri Lankans, I was shocked and ashamed by how the civil war ended – as many of the issues around the systematic prejudice and discrimination that led to the civil war remain unaddressed to this day.
There was no meaningful resolution found to the conflict. Instead there was just horrific and unimaginable violence that resulted in the massacre of thousands of civilians.
As I write this article I am struggling to keep my hope for peace alive in Sri Lanka, as well as in Ireland due to the recent shocking killing of the journalist, Lyra McKee.
“We need to have conversations. Difficult conversations,” Lyra said in her TEDx Stormont Women Talk – because without them meaningful resolutions and lasting peace will not be possible.
I hope and pray for my people in Sri Lanka during this challenging time – that instead of resorting to more violence they will find the courage to have those difficult conversations and pave the way for an inclusive, compassionate and peaceful nation.
Dil Wickremasinghe is the Co-Founder of Insight Matters, psychotherapy, counselling and wellness services and podcaster of “Insight Matters – Inspiring Change in Self & Society”.
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Dear ‘Irish Patient Association’.
The correct spelling of the word is ‘Families’, not ‘Familys’.
I’m starting to lose faith in the human race… I genuinely am.
There are some uneducated gombeens out there.
The brutal truth is vast majority of patients going to GPs don’t really need to be seeing a doctor. Anxious mothers bringing little johnny and Mary in for a check up when the fact that little Johnny and Mary are running around shows they don’t need to be anywhere near a doctor. Then you have elderly people who come in every week just needing a chat. Truth is the country would get by just fine with a more efficient GP service, and indeed fewer of them.
@Fred Jonsen: And what about hard working people with families who defer visits to a GP because of the costs. Then who later suffer from conditions that should have been diagnosed and referred to consultants who then tell them they should have caught the problem earlier? That is the reality for many families when cash is tight. Your badly conceived concept of pensioners going for a chat and people wasting GPs time is the sort of rubbish we expect from you in whatever weird parallel hateful universe you exist in.
@Fred Jonsen; you can’t expect a non medical parent to Triage their childrens symptoms and signs, and decide on appropriate course of action..
How much does a GP get for each citizen registered with them?
@Eddie O’Neill:
I would imagine that greatly depends on where the practice is.
442 might be a valuable practice in D4 but 1,200 could be unviable in a rural location.
@P.J. Nolan: it doesn’t, they only get paid by the state based on the medical card patients they have, it’s somewhere between €90-€120 per patient per year regardless of how often the come, can’t remember the exact figure
@Kim Jong Coin: I think that flat fee only covers,say six visits,after that it’s something like €21 or €22 per visit
@Kim Jong Coin:
Correct, the medical /GP card patients are based on a fixed fee per year but people that have these cards are much much more likely to repeatedly visit the doctor so the margin per patient will be a lot higher in D4
@Kim Jong Coin: Thanks Kim Jong Coin, so next question is how many of those 1200 patients on that GP’s books actually use the services of that GP in a given year.(Probably cannot be known but can anyone speculate)
Is the figure of E90 to E120 for both Medical Card Patients and Non, or is there a different payment for each?
Does that payment with respect to non-MC patients entitle them to any free visits or bloods for example?
I don’t begrudge a GP their salary or think that their skills were not hard earned but is there a more efficient way for the state to spend that money?
What is the states annual spend on GP fees?
Does a GP have other sources of income beside the state payment for patients, I presume home visits is 1 source, how much does a home visit cost?
@Eddie O’Neill: it depends on age and gende rofnpatinet but basic payment of about €70 per medical card payment no matter how many times they visit per year.
Previous research suggested the average private patient attends 2.2 times per year, the average medical card patient attends 5.5 times per year.
There is NO payment for daytime house calls. This policy has effectively stopped house calls as zero payment is not only non viable but damaging to a medical practice. Many patients are told to go to the Emergency department directly coding the state thousands of euro per patient.
A salary for a GP is usually made from the about hourly private patient that attends (very variable and dependent on area. A lot of expensive bills and tax of course still must be paid from this)
Many GPs stop taking on medical card patients at a certain number as it is just not viable at current payments to care for more.
@Ranty McCrank: Thanks Ranty, very interesting, great name and avatar by the way.
The GPs remind me of the farmers, in that they endlessly complain about how they are in a constant financial crisis. And yet there is no way on Earth that GPs will give up their medical card practice. And it is nigh on impossible for a new doctor to get onto the closed shop that is the medical card panel. And almost all GPs are Irish. Because the truth of the matter is that the medical card delivers a very healthy cheque each year to the GPs and the pharmacists too. And is there anywhere in the country a GP of non-Irish nationality with his/her own practice? Or two?
@Lovely Man: almost all gp’s are Irish because doctors aren’t enticed from abroad due to the FEMPI cuts. On the contrary, the amount of Irish gp’s leaving Ireland is staggering. To clarify another error in your statement, any doctor qualified in general practice can have a GMS panel list so it’s not a ‘closed shop’. Relative to the job that they do , GP’s are extremely good value for money. That is true.
@Lovely Man: yes the third of newly qualified GPs and indeed older established GPs that take themselves and their families to leave for Canada, Australia and New Zealand are putting on an amazing act to pretend GP in Ireland is non viable.
@Lovely Man: yea loads. Many GP’s just set up in private practice because medical card patients not viable. Seriously €70 per year for average 5.5 visits!!! €12 per visit, same as packet cigarettes!! You called out a Plummer recently?. And remember that €12 is before costs!!
@Lovely Man: Sorry to say to you but your comments are very poorly researched and factually incorrect in the main- and I am neither a GP or a farmer…What do you derive your income from? Because unless you have milk, bread, butter etc on your table in the morning, and hopefully neither you or any of your family become unwell, ill or have an accident/mishap- in which case you might just Not be able to get to Work and earn that income. Haven’t you heard of Interdependence within the human race? Yes! We all need each other…so stop knocking other professions/occupations…
Wait until they have to deal with abortions- you think a waiting time is bad now.
@murt de murty: fake news! Try again
Be great if you could actually read the report. Can’t see a thing.
In 2015, the fee varied from 43 euros to 434 euros per patient, depending on age and circumstances, per Dept, of Health site.
EM?? How come there are so GPs from Walkinstown, Crumlin on the Dublin South west list? Thats not Dublin South West??
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