Colombo Fort Magistrate Pasan Amarasena has issued an order barring Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera and 54 other people from the Presidential Secretariat, after monks demanding the release of Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera stayed on the road outside the building through Friday morning.

The order was issued on an application by police, the Daily Mirror reported at 9.26 a.m. The protesters had continued to occupy the road in front of the Secretariat as of that morning, the paper said.

This is the first time the state has moved against the campaign through a court rather than through police on the ground. Thursday night’s confrontation, when officers moved on the monks’ tent at about 9.25 p.m. after two rounds of talks collapsed, produced no charge and no order that any newsroom reported. This does.

Update, 16 October: the structures came down

The campaign complied. The Maha Sangha removed the temporary shelter erected in front of the Presidential Secretariat, Hiru News reported later on Friday, citing its own reporter and stating that the monks did so in deference to the order issued that morning by the Fort Magistrate’s Court.

That is the campaign’s first direct answer to the order, and it came without any confrontation of the kind seen at the site on Thursday night. No arrest or further police action was reported at the site on Friday morning itself — though three people arrested there late on Thursday were bailed by the Fort Magistrate’s Court that afternoon, as recorded in the update below.

Update: the protest moved to Viharamahadevi Park, and the list is now public

The campaign did not disperse. After leaving the Secretariat the monks and their supporters gathered near Viharamahadevi Park, NewsFirst reported — a relocation, not an end.

NewsFirst’s filing also supplies what every earlier account lacked: the composition of the barred list. The order covers Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera, 29 other members of the Maha Sangha, 10 politicians including former minister Udaya Gammanpila, and 13 civil representatives. The outlet publishes the names themselves, beginning with Ven. Ulapane Sumangala, Ven. Viharandeniye Nanda, Ven. Medille Pannaloka, Ven. Balangoda Kashyapa and Ven. Umandawe Samantha Bhadra Theras.

The headcount still does not reconcile — now in a third way. NewsFirst states the order applies to 54 named individuals, agreeing with Tamil Guardian and against the Daily Mirror’s 55. But its own breakdown sums to 53: 1 + 29 + 10 + 13. One person in the stated total is unaccounted for in the categories. Three outlets now give three arithmetics for one list, and this desk cannot reconcile them.

What the police told the court, and what the magistrate said

The order’s reasoning is now on the record. Fort Police submitted that the demonstration was continuing even though the protesters had already met the Secretary to the President and the Chief of Staff, and had been told their concerns would be conveyed to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and efforts made to address the matter.

Police said that while the protesters had been allowed their constitutional rights of expression and assembly, they were now allegedly breaching legal provisions, causing public inconvenience, obstructing police duties and remaining inside a designated high security zone. Senior Superintendent Mahesh Kumarasinghe told the court the protest had run for five days and alleged disorderly conduct within the high-security area. He also told the court that one person had been arrested the previous night and was due to be produced.

Magistrate Pasan Amarasena held that the constitutional guarantees of speech and expression are subject to limitations, noted that the area around the Secretariat contains several strategically important institutions including the Port of Colombo and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, and found the protesters’ conduct was inconveniencing the public. He also noted they already knew their concerns had reached the President and that steps were being considered.

That reasoning sits alongside, rather than against, Tamil Guardian’s account of the legal provision: a public-nuisance power exercised on a police application, in a high security zone.

A third verified outlet has since supplied two things neither Sri Lankan filing carried.

The order was made under section 106(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure Act, which allows a magistrate to order the removal of a public nuisance, Tamil Guardian reported. That answers what the order is: not an injunction obtained by the state in its own right, but a public-nuisance removal order — consistent with Hiru’s account of a police application against named respondents. Tamil Guardian also notes that the Secretariat lies within a high security zone.

It also names one of the others on the list: former minister Udaya Gammanpila, described as among those barred alongside monks and opposition politicians. Until now no filing had named anyone but Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera.

Police read the order out and served it on the monks that morning, and some protesters crumpled up and threw away their copies before the group began dismantling the huts beside Galle Road, Tamil Guardian’s reporter at the scene said. By Friday afternoon the monks had left the site and were holding talks at the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs.

A discrepancy on the headcount. The Daily Mirror describes the order as covering “Ulapane Sumangala Thera and 54 others” — 55 people. Tamil Guardian describes it as barring 54 people in total, including Ulapane Sumangala Thera. NewsFirst has since published the names and agreed on 54, but its own category breakdown adds up to 53. This is now resolved — the components reconcile to 54, and the Daily Mirror’s own fuller filing contradicts itself between 54 and 55 in consecutive sentences. See the 17 October update above.

What the monks actually asked the government for

Tamil Guardian also records the substance of Thursday evening’s talks more fully than any other filing. The Secretary to the President, Nandika Sanath Kumanayake, met a delegation of monks who asked for what they called a technical flaw in the 2019 presidential pardon to be rectified, and for a timeline. He told them a definitive answer could not be given. An official said a decision would come within a month; the monks demanded a specific date. Chief of Presidential Staff Prabath Chandrakeerthi later said the President had agreed to proceed in line with legal procedures and the Constitution, but could not give a timeframe.

Hours after the shelters came down, Minister K.D. Lal Kantha ruled out a pardon outright, saying it would breach the government’s mandate.

On the contested question of who was behind the march, Tamil Guardian’s account sits between the two positions this desk has recorded: it describes a march led from the Temple of the Tooth by the Maha Sangha that members of the SLPP, Sarvajana Balaya, the SJB and the UNP joined, along with Wimal Weerawansa and Gammanpila. That is consistent both with the Maha Sangha being the organiser and with the Police Traffic Division’s description of opposition involvement.

Update: Thursday night’s arrests were real, and the three are already on bail

The question this article left open — whether anyone was in fact arrested at the Secretariat on Thursday night — is now answered, and not by the Opposition Leader.

The Fort Magistrate’s Court has ordered the release on bail of three people arrested for obstructing police duty near the Presidential Secretariat and using loudspeakers without a licence, Hiru News reported on Friday afternoon. They were arrested as alleged members of an unlawful assembly.

The detail matches Sajith Premadasa’s Thursday-night claim closely. Hiru reports that Kollupitiya police made the arrests at about 10.00 p.m. and 10.10 p.m. on Thursday the 15th, near the entrance gate of the One Galle Face complex in the Fort police division — the same stretch beside Galle Road where the shelters stood. Police also took into custody two loudspeakers, an amplifier, a microphone and a small lorry used for the purpose; Hiru says the lorry held large quantities of water bottles and umbrellas.

So Premadasa’s hedged allegation that he had “received information” that several individuals were arrested was correct on the central fact. What he could not supply — a police account and a court record — now exists.

Two cautions. First, Hiru’s own filing does not add up: its headline and opening sentence say three people were granted bail, but the body identifies only two — a 61-year-old from Panchikawatte Road, Colombo 10, and a 38-year-old from Helamada, Hapugastenna — and calls them “two persons.” The third is neither named nor described. This desk cannot reconcile the figures and records them as they stand.

Second, Hiru does not say whether those arrested are monks or lay supporters. It describes them only by age and address. Nothing in the filing connects them by name to the 54 people barred by the magistrate’s order, and the charges — unlawful assembly and unlicensed amplification — are not the same as breaching that order, which was issued the following morning.

Separately on Friday, prison officials called on both principal monastic chapters in Kandy, where the Asgiriya Mahanayake Thera asked how Gnanasara Thera could be released and the Malwathu Mahanayake Thera proposed a separate prison facility for monks in custody. Officials said no decision had been taken on either.

Two accounts of what the order covers

The two filings describe materially different scopes, and the difference is not a matter of emphasis.

The Daily Mirror describes an order “preventing Ulapane Sumangala Thera and 54 others from remaining within the premises of the Presidential Secretariat” — one location, directed at named people, concerning their continued presence.

Hiru News describes an order prohibiting entry to several locations, including the Presidential Secretariat, the President’s House and the Ministry of Finance, and separately prohibiting the obstruction of pavements.

Both agree on the magistrate and on Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera. They do not agree on how many buildings are covered, or on whether the order addresses only remaining at a site or entering it. We have not seen the order itself, and neither outlet quotes its text. Readers should treat the Ministry of Finance and the President’s House as reported by one outlet only.

Who applied, and against whom

Hiru supplies the procedural detail the Daily Mirror omits. The order was issued after the magistrate considered a request by Kompannaveediya (Slave Island) Police, and Hiru’s court reporter says police sought it naming Ven. Ulapane Thera along with other monks and lay people as respondents in the case.

That matters for what the order is. On Hiru’s account this is a police application against named respondents, not an injunction obtained by the state in its own right, and the 55 people are parties to proceedings rather than simply the subject of a notice.

Magistrate Amarasena is the Fort Magistrate who has handled several of this year’s most prominent cases, and who was assigned police protection on 30 September after a letter threatening his life.

The monk named first is the campaign’s founder

Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera is not an incidental name on the list. He launched this campaign at the Maha Maluwa of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy on 10 October, announcing that its first step would be a satyagraha at the site, under the slogan “Do not touch the robe.”

He is also the monk who raised what the campaign was asking for. As the march closed at Kadawatha on Wednesday evening, he told supporters that, just as it had been decided to let imprisoned monks wear the robe when taken outside, steps should be taken to release Gnanasara Thera by the time the march reached Colombo. The campaign had by then substantially won its original demand on prison attire and had moved on to a larger one.

The order therefore names the person who both started the campaign and escalated it.

How the week ran

The march set out from Kandy on 10 October and covered six daily stages down the Kandy road to Colombo, arriving on Thursday. Talks that evening between the Maha Sangha and the President’s Chief of Staff ended without agreement — the government asked for a month, the monks asked for a week — and the monks said they would stay outside the Secretariat until dawn. They were still there on Friday morning, which is what the police application responded to.

A note on the campaign’s name: the Daily Mirror renders it “Justice for the Robe – National Pledge Offering and Freedom March,” while this desk has previously carried “Justice for the Robe – National Commitment Pooja.” These are competing English renderings of the same Sinhala name, not two campaigns.

Update, 17 October: four representatives, and the talks were with the ministry’s Secretary

Two later filings fill in the meeting this article could previously only record as having happened.

The Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs granted a meeting to four monk representatives, the Daily Mirror reported at 3.33 p.m. on Friday. It describes the campaign as the “Justice for the Robe – Freedom March,” launched on 10 October from the Sri Dalada Maligawa premises in Kandy under the leadership of the Maha Sangha — the first time any filing in this archive has given the march a formal name.

Hiru News, filing early on Saturday, is more specific about who received them: the monks went to the ministry after withdrawing from the Secretariat under the court order, held discussions with the Ministry Secretary, and moved to Viharamahadevi Park in the afternoon. Hiru reports them still camped there at the time of writing, which answers how long the new location has been held but not how long it will be.

The seniority matters. The Secretary to the Ministry of Buddhasasana is Prince Senadheera, who chairs the committee drafting the prison-rule amendments — an identification this newsroom makes from its own earlier reporting; neither filing names him. On that reading the campaign was received not by a general ministry official but by the author of the reforms it triggered.

Hiru also gives the headcount as 54 including Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera, matching the Tamil Guardian and NewsFirst figure against the Daily Mirror’s 55.

One caution on Hiru’s own link: its English slug renders the Sinhala headline as monks gathering “to apologize to” Gnanasara Thera. The Sinhala (සමාව ඉල්ලා) is a request for a pardon for him, consistent with the campaign’s stated demand. The slug inverts the direction of the appeal and should not be read as a description of the story.

Update, 17 October: the headcount reconciles — and the talks failed

Two further Daily Mirror filings resolve the longest-running discrepancy in this article and answer its central open question.

The 54 now adds up. A fuller Daily Mirror filing at 10.51 a.m. on Friday gives the breakdown as Ven. Ulapane Sumangala Thera and 29 other Buddhist monks, former Minister Udaya Gammanpila and 10 other politicians, and 18 civil society representatives. On its own that sums to 59, not 54 — a fourth arithmetic.

But set against NewsFirst’s breakdown it isolates where the error lies. Both outlets agree on 30 monks. They differ on two components: the Daily Mirror counts 11 politicians (Gammanpila plus 10 others) where NewsFirst counts 10 including Gammanpila, and the Daily Mirror counts 18 civil society members where NewsFirst counts 13.

Taking the Daily Mirror’s politicians and NewsFirst’s civil representatives gives 30 + 11 + 13 = 54 — matching the total that the Daily Mirror, Tamil Guardian, NewsFirst and Hiru all state. It is the only combination of the published component figures that reconciles. This desk records that as arithmetic, not as a newsroom’s statement: on this reading NewsFirst undercounted the politicians by one and the Daily Mirror overcounted the civil representatives by five, and the stated total of 54 was right all along.

One further note on the Daily Mirror’s own figures: this filing says in its opening paragraph that the order covers “54 individuals, including Venerable Ulapane Sumangala Thera,” and in its next paragraph that it prohibits “Venerable Ulapane Sumangala Thera and 54 others.” Those are 54 and 55 respectively, in consecutive sentences of one article. The 55 that this archive attributed to the Daily Mirror is therefore a discrepancy within that newsroom, not only between newsrooms.

The ministry talks ended in failure. This article previously recorded that four monk representatives were received by the Secretary to the Buddhasasana Ministry but that no filing carried a word of substance from either side. The Daily Mirror now reports that the monks moved to Viharamahadevi Park stating that the discussions with the Ministry’s Secretary had ended in failure. The relocation was therefore a response to collapsed talks as well as to the court order.

The park was contested from the first night. The monks arrived on Friday afternoon and a tense situation arose with police as the group attempted to erect a temporary shelter for the night. Ven. Tittagalle Anandasiri Thera said they would not vacate the premises until Gnanasara Thera is released — the first named spokesman for the campaign at the new site. On Saturday evening, Ven. Balangoda Kassapa Thera — fourth on the barred list — was hospitalised from the park, with protesters alleging police assaulted him.

Separately on Saturday, a counter-march against this campaign reached the Presidential Secretariat and had a delegation received inside it — the building this order closed to the 54.

Not reported

The legal provision is now known — section 106(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure Act — the magistrate’s stated reasoning is on the record, and the list of those named has been published by NewsFirst, as recorded in the updates above. What remains unreported is the order’s duration, whether it was made ex parte or with the respondents represented, and what follows if it is disobeyed.

The headcount is no longer open: the four published component figures reconcile to exactly 54 on one reading, set out in the update above. No newsroom has itself stated that reconciliation, and no outlet has corrected its own figures, so the composition should still be treated as this desk’s arithmetic rather than as a published breakdown.

The monks’ immediate response is now on the record: the shelters came down in compliance, four representatives were received at the Buddhasasana Ministry by its Secretary, those talks ended in failure on the monks’ own account, and the campaign regrouped at Viharamahadevi Park, where it has since been held through a dispute over an overnight shelter and the hospitalisation of one of the barred monks. What is still not reported is what was actually said at those talks — no filing carries a word of substance from either side, only the monks’ characterisation of the outcome — whether any further meeting was sought or agreed, how long the campaign intends to hold the new location, or whether being outside the barred zone places it beyond the order’s reach.

Police told the court that one person was arrested on Thursday night and was due to be produced that day. Whether that individual is among the three Hiru reports as bailed, or a fourth, is not stated by either outlet.

The government’s position has since hardened in public: Minister K.D. Lal Kantha ruled out a pardon on Friday. But no response to the court order itself has been reported from the campaign, the Maha Sangha or the President’s office. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa had called on the President to intervene personally on Thursday night; whether the order changes that position is not reported.

The arrests Premadasa alleged did take place, as recorded in the update above: three people were arrested near the Secretariat late on Thursday and have since been bailed by the Fort Magistrate’s Court. What is still unreported is their identities beyond two ages and addresses, whether they are monks or lay supporters, whether they are connected to the 54 named in the magistrate’s order, the terms of their bail, and the date to which their case stands adjourned. Hiru’s headcount of three is also unreconciled with the two people its own report describes.

Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News (Sinhala), Hiru News — structures removed (Sinhala), Hiru News — three bailed (Sinhala), Tamil Guardian, NewsFirst — protest relocates, Daily Mirror — ministry meeting, Hiru News — Viharamahadevi Park (Sinhala), Daily Mirror — headcount breakdown, Daily Mirror — satyagraha continues.