The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
TERROR IN PARADISE
BBC Two, 9.00pm
On Easter Sunday last year a series of backpacks filled with nails, ball bearings and explosives were left in Christian churches and luxury hotels across Sri Lanka. The devastating attacks, which were coordinated and carried out by radical cleric Zahran Hashim and claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group, would leave almost 300 people dead and injure over 500. This bleak but important report from Jane Corbin returns to the country to talk to survivors and experts about the attacks and to examine the continued struggles of the country’s tourism industry.
We learn that Hashim, who died during the attacks, had been under surveillance for several years, reported by community leaders in the east-coast Sri Lankan town of Kattankudy where he had been expelled from the local seminary for extremist views as a teenager, and we see the CCTV footage of the hours prior to the attack. The film’s true power, however, comes from the emotional testimony of the survivors, from a pair of young Australians to a Sri Lankan academic who survived because he went back for his credit card, and, devastatingly, a
Sri Lankan-American woman who lost her 11-year-old son.
Sarah Hughes
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