Following the extremist terror attack in Bondi Beach, Australia, international news has once again shone a light on a dormant issue which plagues many democracies: violent extremism. The attack took the lives of 15 individuals of the Australian Jewish community, including a child.
The public outcry after the attack in Australia sounds eerily like what was echoed following the 2019 Easter Sunday Bombings across Sri Lanka. Questions remain unanswered about how the accused father-son duo stayed under the radar of Aussie intelligence agencies and law enforcement. Intelligence agencies, by nature, keep details about their operations, surveillance and tactics a tightly guarded secret. Unlike in Sri Lanka, the Australian Intelligence systems have more oversight mechanisms and are answerable by law to domestic structures. Nevertheless, there is a growing public demand for information about what the Australian authorities knew, didn’t know, and more importantly, didn’t do.
A red-faced Australian Premier told the media that Australian Intelligence authorities had been looking at the younger shooter, ‘Akram’, for a period of six months in 2019, but concluded he was not an ongoing threat. The New South Wales Police Commissioner told the Press the deceased shooter, Sajid, and Akram had travelled to the Philippines only weeks before their alleged attack. Inquiries are underway to find out if they were in touch with Islamic terror groups in the Philippines. Many questions remain unanswered, and the Australian Premier has thus far not ordered a ‘Royal Commission’ to investigate the mass casualty event. The Australian Intelligence and law enforcement systems, structures, and procedures are today under scrutiny, as were the Sri Lankan Intelligence and law enforcement communities following the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.
The attack is a reminder that democracies remain vulnerable to such violence and disruptions, despite their varying degrees of multicultural success and level of ‘development’. In functional democracies, Intelligence agencies cannot watch everyone, every hour of the day. Or so we are told. Australia and New Zealand are considered democratic and multicultural success stories, and are preferred destinations for many Sri Lankans who are eagerly seeking ‘greener pastures’. Nevertheless, extremism and violence have happened in both countries, with New Zealand and now Australia recording mass casualty terror incidents over the last decade.
Combating extremism, especially violent extremism, has been a prickly topic in Sri Lanka, particularly following the Easter Sunday attack. Sri Lanka has a long history of extremists and violent extremism, with incidents of hate speech, intolerance, instigation of public disorder and riots dotting the island’s troubled post-colonial history. The trust deficit between the State and the communities it governs, on fair treatment, remains a serious issue. However, extremism and the need to counter it remain ‘national security elephants’ in the room, which Sri Lankans will have to face at some point.
Many Sri Lankan Governments have not been able to find the right balance of surveillance versus privacy, or have had the political fortitude to call a spade a spade, when extremists are found in our community. This is partially due to the populist politics which Sri Lanka often runs on. If an extremist is found in the majority community, often authorities mull over quick action or soft peddle, due to worries about how it may impact at the ballot box. Similarly, when an extremist is found in minority communities, authorities worry about how surveillance and law enforcement action will be viewed by the minorities and the international community. In the end, action is delayed. The same applies to our communities; each will be quick to flag the others ‘extremist’, while few will report their own. Compounding the issue are legacy allegations levelled at authorities from the Eelam war period, which remain largely unresolved, creating legacy baggage which makes current operations more difficult than they need to be. Historic impartiality in the application of the law, and also eroded confidence in justice among the minority communities, making many in the community hesitant to come forward with critical early warning information.
As a country, Sri Lanka needs to move quickly to depoliticise the enforcement mechanism and rebuild the credibility of law enforcement practitioners to enforce the law based on evidence and intelligence. The Government must also leave Intelligence and law enforcement to professionals with sound oversight and resist the urge to place ‘loyalists’ at the head of operations to ensure political control. This is not the era for ‘Yes Men’. It must also stop allowing politicians to politicise narratives regarding extremism and violence. National security is everyone’s business; the community, the citizen and the State, all have their role to play. Sri Lanka has too many fault lines which we cannot ignore and let lie, to be exploited. Collectively, Sri Lanka must identify, deter and neutralise extremist ideologies and movements. We cannot afford another Easter Sunday Bombing or a similar Bondi Beach attack.