On Tuesday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CID) in Colombo, Sri Lanka arrested the protester who had aggressively invaded Sri Lanka’s official television, the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation on July 13. The protester identified as Danish Ali was arrested by the CID officers from the Katunayake Bandaranaike International Airport while he was trying to escape to Dubai.
According to the reports, the Police arrested him after the Sri Lanka Court issued a warrant of arrest in his name. On July 13, Danish Ali who represents ‘Aragala Protestors’ had come on air along with one of his aides and disrupted the scheduled TV program. He had taken over the special broadcast talk show and had told the anchor and audience that they had taken over the station on behalf of the people.
#BREAKING | Sri Lankan protestor who halted state TV Programme to broadcast own message arrested aboard Dubai flight. Danish Ali had barged into premises of SL’s national TV network Rupavahini Corporation & stopped their program to broadcast own messagehttps://t.co/bbyaMwOij9 pic.twitter.com/VLhW96l1WF
— Republic (@republic) July 27, 2022
“Protesters are on the premises. We have not even aimed a stone at Rupavahini. We only requested to change the broadcast and join the arugula and not to join any leader than comes but to be independent. Now as aragala we took this over for the people we thank the staff for accepting us”, Danish Ali had said on air. The Sri Lanka Rupahavini Corporation (SLRC), the state-owned television network was heavily guarded as the demonstrators invaded the station.
A day after the protest, however, Ali, the ‘Gota Go Gama’ activist addressed a press brief and clarified that the protest led by the ‘Aragala Protestors’ was peaceful and that no properties were damaged by the demonstrators. “The ones who damaged the properties belonged to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa”, he said.
He had also mentioned that the protestors had vacated every building stormed except for the President’s Secretariat. “President’s secretariat is for the people. We want to show that we are capable. If we leave, we can come back the next minute if we want”, he had added. On July 9, the protesters forcibly entered the office of the President and the Prime Minister and his residence, and a fierce face-off between the protesters and security forces was reported from Colombo.
Following the fierce protest, former President Rajapaksa left Sri Lanka on July 13 and went to the Maldives and then to Singapore. Ranil Wickremesinghe was later appointed as the new President of Sri Lanka on July 21. The CID arrested the protester named Danish Ali after the Court orders. Investigations in the case are underway.
