People power throng the President’s home
Extremist mob tarnish peaceful protest with violence
On March 5 SJB’s Hirunika Premachandra with members of the party’s women’s wing storm the presidential lane at Mirihana to bring the nation’s woes to the President’s door. After holding her protest and handing over a letter to be delivered to the President, she and her group peacefully leave but not before telling the media: “I held this protest outside Gota’s home mainly to break the fear psychosis of the people.”
Before March had ended, Hirunika had solid evidence, dramatically shown live on Thursday night television, that she had achieved what she had sworn to destroy: she had successfully smashed to smithereens, the people’s phobia of fear.
On March 31st evening, while the nation lay in darkness due to a 13 hour blackout, a crowd was gathering at the Jubilee Post to stage their daily protest. This time they decided to do it differently, to air their grief at the President’s home down Pangiriwatte Lane just 200 odd yards away.
In what was, perhaps, the symbolic equivalent to the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution, the angry crowd thronged the entrance to the presidential lane. After Hirunika’s trail
blazing excursion to the Presidential gates itself, the Police had erected two large steel barricades to prevent entry to this forbidden lane which, apart from the president’s private home, also had many other private homes.
For more than an hour a livid people, their frustrations furrowed on their faces, kept a noisy but peaceful vigil, shouting slogans and holding placards to demonstrate their fury at the Government’s failure to resolve the never ending stream of crises. For over an hour they laid siege to the lane, continuing with their protest.
But as the minutes ticked, so did the crowd enlarge. So did patience wear thin. The public mood distinctly changed. The steamy night suddenly
became charged and anger stood poised to breakout. The heat was on. The cacophony grew louder, the frenzy reaching boiling point. It seemed that an extremist force had inveigled itself into the noisy but still peaceful air, one whose brief was to tarnish a people’s genuine outpouring with violence.
A few minutes after 9.30, a violent impulse stirred in the crowd. To add a surreal touch, the streets lights went out and the road lay enveloped in darkness, with only anger starkly visible. The crowd began to topple the steel barricade but though the police resisted at first, they eventually succeeded. The barricades fell and the jubilant crowd charged down the street where the President lived to meet head on the riot squad shield of defence.
With the crowds engaged in a tense stand-off, it became apparent that action had to be taken before the last line of defence fell and the President’s home lay open to be stormed. Stones were hurled. Two state buses were burnt. The extremist spirit had taken hold. Soon the Police started to fire tear gas into the crowds forcing them to disperse. Journalists were among the injured; 45 were arrested and some reportedly beaten in cells. A curfew was declared in Colombo and surrounding areas.
A people’s protest had begun in peace that evening. A mystery force ensured the night ended in war. But let the masterminds who sent the mob beware that not all the evil they caused can snuff the flame lit throughout the nation to symbolise a people’s suffering nor stifle their potent, peaceful dissent.
The violence and the imposition of emergency law lift the crisis to another level; and, as for the tears that flowed from the tear gas bombardment, they will be nothing new to a people who came to vent their woes in peace but simply add to the tally of tears they have known and wept unbidden in silent suffering, in exquisite anguish these past few weeks. The tears will only stiffen their resolve to carry on the potent fight till the Government acts or falls.