Sri Lanka has a long history of terrorism. Most of the attacks were carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Marxist-Leninist , Communist Party Janata Mukti Peramuna (JVP). The LTTE violently tried to form an independent Tamil state by seizing control of a region from the Sinhalese ethnic majority country , and they were defeated in 2009. The JVP was involved in armed rebellions in 1971 and 1987-89. There were 13 non-state terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka in the 2000s , all of which were carried out by the LTTE. The 2019 attack was Sri Lanka's first major attack in the 2010s after the LTTE's defeat. The major religions in Sri Lanka are Buddhism (70%) , Hinduism (13%) , Muslim (10%) and Christianity (8%) , with 82% of Christians being Roman Catholic. The remaining Christians are equally divided between the Anglican Church of Sinhala and other Protestant groups. In the 2010s, small but persistent Christian congregations, and separately Christian individuals and other religious minorities, were attacked and threatened. Colombo's Anglican bishop Dhiloraj has demanded a constitutional right to protect religion in Canagasabe. In 2016 , the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) reported a sharp increase in the number of attacks on Christians in the country that year. In August, the Supreme Court ruled against a Catholic organization , stating that conversion was not protected by the constitution (although the individual's religious freedom was protected). Easter Sunday is one of the holiest days for Christians and the number of church goers in Sri Lanka is very high on that day. The New York Times and AFP reported that a police chief warned security officials 10 days before the attack about threats from major radical Islamist groups, including the National Touhid Jamaat, to major churches. No information has been sent to the country's top politicians , but Minister Harin Fernando later tweeted an internal memo from the police intelligence department and some pictures of the report about a militant attack planned by National Tauhid Jamaat leader Mohammad Zahran. This is the first time since the end of Sri Lanka's civil war in 2009 that the country has witnessed a major militant attack.