Sri Lanka:

The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka will initiate the canonization process for the victims of the 2019 Easter Sunday Islamist attacks. The Press Trust of India reported this on January 22 quoting the Sunday Mass message from the Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, who said, “A person can be named a saint only after the completion of 5 years since one’s sacrifice. Therefore, we will move towards declaring Easter Sunday victims as saints on April 21 this year."

The targets included three churches where Easter Sunday services were being held on April 21, 2019: St. Anthony's Shrine in Colombo, St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, and Zion Church in Batticaloa. Three high-end hotels in Colombo—the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand, and Kingsbury—were also attacked. The attacks were carried out by a local Islamist extremist group known as National Thowheed Jama'ath (NTJ), which was later linked to the Islamic State (ISIS). 

The Sri Lankan government faced criticism for not acting on intelligence warnings received before the attacks regarding possible threats. In the aftermath of the bombings that killed over 265 people, the government implemented security measures, declared a state of emergency, and conducted a series of arrests to dismantle the networks involved in the attacks.

In January last year, the Supreme Court in Sri Lanka ordered former President Maithripala Sirisena and a few other former government and intelligence officials to pay compensation to the victims of the terrorist attacks, observing they didn’t take proactive measures to prevent the execution of the plot. The verdict was issued by a seven-judge bench of the highest court.