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.

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.

Not reported

Neither filing gives the legal provision the order was made under, its duration, whether it was made ex parte or with the respondents represented, or what happens if it is disobeyed. Neither names any of the other 54 respondents, says how the figure of 55 was arrived at, or reports whether the monks were still at the site after the order was issued.

No response from the campaign, the Maha Sangha, the President’s office or any opposition party had been reported at the time of writing. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa had called on the President to intervene personally on Thursday night; whether the order changes that position is not reported.

It is also unreported whether any of the arrests Premadasa said he had “received information” about on Thursday night in fact took place. That claim remains unconfirmed by any police statement or court record, and nothing in Friday’s filings addresses it.

Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News (Sinhala).