COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: A court in Colombo on Friday ordered 55 people, including the Buddhist monk Ulapane Sumangala Thera, to leave the premises of the Presidential Secretariat, where monks who marched from Kandy this week have been staging a sit-in to demand the release of the hard-line nationalist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera.
The Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court issued the order a day after the marchers reached the secretariat, which houses the president’s office, at the end of a six-day, 121-kilometer procession from the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy. The march, called the Nidahase Pada Yathra, or Freedom March, set out on Oct. 10.
The monks sat down outside the building on Thursday evening and stayed through the night in heavy rain. The president’s secretary, Nandika Sanath Kumanayake, met them on Thursday, but the talks ended without agreement. The protesters said officials had told them the government would need at least a month to decide, and they said they would not leave until Gnanasara Thera was freed.
After Friday’s order, the protesters crossed Galle Road and moved to the pavement opposite the secretariat, where they remained on Friday.
On Sept. 10, the Supreme Court struck down a pardon granted to Gnanasara Thera in May 2019 by then-President Maithripala Sirisena. Gnanasara Thera, the general secretary of Bodu Bala Sena, a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group, was returned to prison in October. The Court of Appeal had convicted him in 2018 on four counts of contempt of court stemming from his conduct at the Homagama Magistrate’s Court, where he berated Sandya Eknaligoda, whose husband, the cartoonist and journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda, disappeared in 2010. Sentenced to six years of rigorous imprisonment, Gnanasara Thera had served about nine months before receiving the presidential pardon.
The police arrested him on the night of Oct. 3 at a monastery in Kalutara District, and on Oct. 5 the Court of Appeal ordered prison authorities to enforce the rest of his sentence. Prison officials removed his robes that afternoon and placed him in a ward with ordinary inmates, a decision that senior clergy and opposition politicians have condemned. The government has said the Prisons Department followed the same procedure for all 63 Buddhist monks now serving sentences. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told representatives of the chief prelates on Oct. 8 that a committee would be appointed to propose rules on how monks are treated in prison.
Gnanasara Thera also faces a nine-month term of simple imprisonment, upheld by the Colombo High Court in June, over statements at a news conference that the court found had promoted discord between Muslims and Sinhalese. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear his challenge to that sentence on Feb. 23.
Monks have protested on his behalf before. During Mr. Sirisena’s presidency, the police fired tear gas and used water cannons on monks who had gone to the same building to seek his release.
