Pushing through the once forbidding gates, protestors crowd past one of the temple trees for which the official residence of the prime minister of Sri Lanka was first named in 1856. It was the third government building to be occupied on 9th July 2022. Earlier that day, the frontline of the protest had braved gunfire, teargas, and baton-wielding police to capture first the Presidential Secretariat at Galle Face, and then President’s House, in the Colombo Fort, the official residence of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse. In contrast, Temple Trees, in Colpetty, was taken with relatively little resistance, its occupant, former PM Mahinda Rajapakse (he had been forced to resign, but not vacate, two months previously), having already fled.
Son of the Morning Light 