We are in mourning, across societies, across nations. Those who have perished in Sri Lanka and those who struggle for life in the aftermath of the terror attacks on Easter Sunday are people we call our own, for, as the poet Archibald Macleish once put it so well, we are brothers on the earth together, brothers who know they are truly brothers.

The explosions which left lives ravaged in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday were a grievous attack on the collective conscience of humanity. They were once again a reflection of the way men and women with warped minds work. And they work armed with weapons of hate. Even so, we did not quite anticipate the calamity that could be visited on people busy remembering the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in all their piety on an Easter morning. The eight blasts which shook Sri Lanka on Sunday put paid to that sense of complacence on our part. In the name of God, people steeped in villainy are out there with sinister intentions of murdering other people believing in other faiths. These merchants of death have now murdered no fewer than 290 people and left as many as 500 wounded. We understand that the Colombo authorities have taken twenty four people under detention in connection with the explosions. We will expect the investigations into the terrorism to be completed swiftly and purposefully. The Sri Lankan authorities owe it to their people to explain as well why security collapsed all over the country and why no one paid any attention when warnings were earlier sounded about the probability of the terror attacks.

The blasts in Sri Lanka are a warning to governments everywhere, indeed to all of us in South Asia and beyond, of how the forces of evil may yet be lurking in the shadows. Terrorism, let us be clear, is not dead. For governments in South Asia, it is now imperative that a thorough reordering of the national security apparatus in each individual country be initiated.

Our prayers go to the families that have borne the tragedy. It is a cross we bear together, across frontiers. Let us take a vow to defeat the purveyors of terrorism. Those who trade in terror are enemies of history and civilization. We must reclaim the world from their blood-drenched hands, in all the fury and in all the determination we can muster.

By Editor-in-Chief -Enayetullah Khan