In the wake of the horrific bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, Uniting Church Reverend Dev Anandarajan has called for people to come together and reject violence and disunity.
Mr Anandarajan, who is the Uniting Church Synod of Victoria and Tasmania’s Intercultural Leadership Development Coordinator, said the attack was “very un-Sri Lankan”.
“We are a country which prides itself on being religiously plural,” he told ABC Radio.
“We have had the major religions coexisting in a peaceful way. Yes, we have had tensions between religions in the past, but this is something different. This is a bomb being planted in churches – and at Easter, a time they know the churches are full.
“This is a time when we all need to come together, people of good will, people who are for a peaceful coexistence – we need to stand together across the ethnic and religious divides and say ‘this is not on, this is not who we are’ and we will not tolerate this kind of violence unleashed on people, whoever they might be.”
Mr Anandarajan was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Australia in 1996. He still has family in Sri Lanka, but thankfully none of them were injured in the attacks that killed 290 people on Easter Sunday.
