A court order requiring the monks and others taking part in the satyagraha at Viharamahadevi Park in Colombo to leave the site was read out to them on Thursday evening — after which the police withdrew without removing anyone.

Officers from Kurunduwatta Police arrived at the park carrying an order directing that the group vacate the location, Hiru News reported at 7.32 p.m.

Their arrival produced what Hiru described in an earlier filing, at 6.54 p.m., as a tense situation at the sit-in, attributing the tension to the police having come with the order.

The order was read, not enforced

The sequence in the later filing is specific and worth separating from the headline. The court’s order — which includes a direction that those present refrain from continuing to remain at the park — was read aloud to the group. The police then left the location.

Nothing in either filing says anyone was removed, arrested or charged on Thursday evening, or that the protesters agreed to go. On the reporting available, the sit-in was still in place when the officers withdrew.

Neither Hiru filing names the court that issued the order, gives its case number, says who applied for it, or states what happens if it is not obeyed.

Update, 23 October. Two of those gaps have since closed. Later reporting identifies the issuing court as the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court, and on Friday Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama ruled that the order cannot be varied and that police may act under the Penal Code if it is breached — while also refusing the Attorney General’s request for arrest warrants.

What the protest is

The satyagraha demands the release of Ven. Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thera, who is serving a prison sentence. Hiru’s earlier filing identifies him by his office as general secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena organisation — that is his position, not an indication that the organisation is running the protest.

The sit-in entered its sixth day on Wednesday the 21st, when the Asgiri Chapter prelate Ven. Medagama Dhammananda said senior monks had taken legal advice and hoped a process could begin leading to a presidential pardon. That places Thursday at the seventh day.

Correction: this article originally gave the sixth day as Tuesday and Thursday as the eighth day. The sixth day was Wednesday the 21st, and the Daily Mirror records Friday the 23rd as the eighth day, which makes Thursday the seventh.

A campaign already shaped by court orders

Thursday’s order is the second time a court has restricted where this campaign may assemble. A Fort magistrate on 16 October barred 54 people connected to it, 30 of them monks, from the area around the Presidential Secretariat under section 106(1). Viharamahadevi Park is the site the campaign has occupied since.

The park has also been the scene of two incidents this desk has recorded. Ven. Balangoda Kassapa Thera was hospitalised from the sit-in on 17 October, and a man was detained at the site late on 21 October — police said on Thursday that he was found with two prohibited knives and has since been bailed.

Not reported

Neither filing says whether the order was obtained in connection with those incidents, with the weather, with the park’s status as public land, or for another reason entirely. Neither says how many people are currently at the site.

No other verified newsroom had filed on the court order at the time of writing. Both have since caught up: NewsFirst reported the order on Friday morning, naming the station by its English designation Cinnamon Gardens Police and adding that the monks and others continue to remain at the park, and the Daily Mirror carried it the same morning, confirming the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court as the source of the directive and reporting that Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader Udaya Gammanpila had complained to the same station that some participants were taken into custody.

Note that Hiru’s Sinhala names the station as Kurunduwatta and NewsFirst’s English as Cinnamon Gardens. These are the same station, not two forces. Ada Derana’s site has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than a month and could not be checked.