Dying in the food queue
Sri Lanka's crisis turns deadly, plus Ukraine latest, Afghanistan, more
Sri Lankans marked the third anniversary of Easter bombings that killed 279 people amid weeks of protests and the worst economic crisis the island nation has faced since its independence from Britain in 1948.
“Our people are on the brink with food, fuel and essential medicines becoming increasingly scarce and unbearably expensive,” said Godfrey Yogarajah, General Secretary of the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL), in a statement released Thursday via the World Evangelical Alliance.
Welcome to this April 22 edition of Globe Trot. Poet Gerard Manley-Hopkins writes of man’s world as “bleared, smeared with toil,” yet somehow charged (like the spring) with God’s grandeur—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Sri Lanka: Protesters and church leaders increasingly see a connection between 2019’s Easter Sunday attacks, which ripped through three churches and three hotels during church services, and the current crisis.
The government that swept into power following the bombings, led by strongman Gotabaya Rajapksa, has delayed justice while courting economic disaster. Last week President Rajapksa, known as Gota, announced the country would default on its foreign debt (totally $35 billion). Reserves are so low the government cannot afford to import basic supplies. People are dying waiting in line for fuel and food. Hospitals have cut services while facing supply and medicine shortages, along with power outages lasting 15 hours over the past week.
Protesters for weeks have gathered in Colombo near the presidential residence chanting “Gota go home.” They demand the president’s resignation and an audit of the assets of his powerful family. At the same time, Catholic clergy have appealed to the United Nations to investigate the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, calling the massacre a “political plot.” Christian leaders call for prayer and unity in the majority Buddhist country.
India: A mob of 100 radical Hindu nationalists brutally beat three Christian families in Odisha state while an Easter service was in progress.
Ukraine: Local officials say up to 9,000 bodies are buried in the mass grave discovered in the village of Mangush near Mariupol, as Russian forces continue to besiege the southern port city. Despite appeals for civilian evacuations, Ukrainians remain trapped in basement bunkers.
They were in basements containing 80-100 people each but it was unclear how many civilians there were in total as some buildings had been destroyed and fighters could not reach them because of shelling.
Ukrainian officials say Russian forces are taking thousands of civilians to Russia from Mariupol and neighboring Donetsk in forced deportations, a war crime.
Here’s a look at those Russian filtration camps.
In central Ukraine one church is caring for 1,000 war victims from places like Mariupol.
When I was looking at all these people, I kept thinking, they had homes, jobs, they had dreams, and plans just two months ago. Most of them came from areas completely destroyed by war (like Mariupol). They are not running from poverty, they are running from war. They don’t want to go abroad. They are staying in Ukraine in hopes to return home soon. But sadly some of them already know that their homes were completely destroyed.
Wishing the rain would never stop.
Belarus: Police have raided the homes of Catholic and Protestant clergy—jailing and fining some over comments and social media posts that express opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Belarus’s crackdown on dissent. Aleksandr Baran, a parish priest who received a 10-day jail term, said, “By their policy they are meddling in the life of every person, in the life of the Church, they want to destroy its authority and shut people's mouths."
Hungary: The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the largest and most influential confabs of American conservatives, will gather in Budapest next month with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as its keynote speaker.
Afghanistan: Dozens of people were killed in four explosions across Afghanistan on Thursday targeting the countries Shiite population. The Islamic State admitted carrying out a bombing at one of the largest Shiite mosques in Mazar-i-Sharif used by the Hazara minority group. The bombings come two days after blasts tore through a high school in a predominantly Shiite Hazara area of the capital, Kabul, killing at least six.
The Hazaras are a predominantly Shia Muslim ethnic group that have been the target of mass killings and other serious human rights violations by Taliban forces. A Human Rights Watch report found evidence of the now-ruling Taliban working with local militants to evict Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Lebanon: Officials approved the demolition of landmark grain silos in Beirut’s port, gutted in the devastating 2020 explosion that killed 216 people and ravaged the city. Relatives of victims wanted the structures to remain part of a memorial.
Iraq: Holy Week brought thousands to a procession through the streets of Qaraqosh, a town in Nineveh Plain devastated and emptied by Islamic State militants. “Security is never guaranteed for Christians in this country. But we have the grace of God, as we say, the Lord is with us,” said Naim Shoshandy, a priest from Qaraqosh whose brother was killed by ISIS militants in 2014.
ICYMI: N.T. Wright’s sermon mentioned last week is here.
Coming up: Faith in the Wilderness: Words of Exhortation from the Chinese Church by Hannah Nation and Simon Liu is out next week from the Center for House Church Theology and Kirkdale Press. I’ll share an interview with Hannah Nation about how it came to be.
At Globe Trot we celebrate the dignity of men, women, boys and girls. Made in the image of God, their works and presence in this life—whether art, science, health, politics, humanities or industry—become therefore important. This energizes our global engagement every day despite tribulation, famine, danger and sword. As an early American Puritan said, “The very wheelbarrow is to be with respect looked upon."