By Dr. Sanjana Hattotuwa

This brief report investigates the relationship between a court order issued on 3 June, when Colombo Fort Magistrate Pasan Amarasekara imposed an overseas travel ban on former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and two military personnel in connection with the Easter Sunday attacks investigation, and a pronounced rise in Facebook content framing Suresh Sallay, Sri Lanka’s former intelligence chief. Exactly a week after the court order, on 10 June, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala told Parliament that Sallay had directed the 2019 attack network killing nearly 300 people. This was the first official statement linking him directly to the horrific bombings.

Political context, and background is essential to read the content, and commentary on Facebook framing Sallay since 3 June. The Easter Sunday attacks preceded, and by most accounts enabled, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election to the presidency in November 2019 on a platform of national security raised to a fever pitch.

Allegations that he, or elements of military intelligence connected to him, had foreknowledge of or a hand in the attacks have circulated for years – raised by the Catholic Church, by the UK Channel 4’s reporting, and by successive domestic investigations, though never established in court. The 3 June travel ban was significant because is constituted the first visible judicial extension of the Easter attacks investigation towards the former President, and in doing so connected three elements – the attacks, Gotabaya, and Sallay – that defenders of the Rajapaksa-era security establishment (going back to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency, when Gotabaya was a consequential Defence Secretary) have laboured to keep apart.

Sourced from Meta’s Content Library tool, this study is based on 7,695 Facebook posts on public accounts (institutional, and individual) created between 12 May and 10 June 2026. These posts were published by 1,233 unique accounts that included pages, groups, and personal profiles. Sinhala content, unsurprisingly, dominates: 6,737 posts were in Sinhala, 270 in English, and 67 in Tamil. Pages accounted for 5,430 posts, and individual profiles for 2,265, with 1,631 posts circulating in groups. The search term used to harvest the content included two variations of Sallay’s surname (Sallay, and Salley), as well as “සුරේෂ් සලේ” in Sinhala.

Before the travel ban on Gotabaya, there were around 36 posts a day naming Sallay, Gotabaya, and the Easter attacks. From the moment of the magistrate’s order until 10 June, the rate rises to around 827 posts per day or around 23 times rate previously. After Wijepala’s parliamentary statement, the rate climbs again to around 1,112 posts a day, roughly 31 times the baseline. These figures establish a very large temporal association between court’s ruling on 3 June mentioning Gotabaya, and the discursive surge around Sallay.

That said, the post distribution pattern points to lag rather than immediate response – which can be read as political networks assessing fallout, and exposure, and only then deciding to launch online, and offline campaigns supportive of Sallay, which by proxy addresses the reputational impact on the Rajapaksas (that for Namal’s appeal remains a core concern, unlike for his Uncle, and father, who have retired from active politics). The travel-ban day produced 224 posts – a clear elevation, but not an explosion. June 4 recorded 185 posts and June 5 recorded 206. June 6 reached 319. After this, the growth was considerable: 1,174 posts on 7 June, 1,886 on 8 June, 1,402 on 9 June, and 1,384 on 10 June.

In one reading, this suggests that the travel ban did not itself mobilise the discourse but supplied a Gotabaya-facing legal hook – the moment the investigation visibly reached towards the former President – which made the defence of Sallay urgent for actors who read the case as a threat to the wider Rajapaksa narrative. The mobilisation proper appears to have required additional triggers, which the week supplied through news reports: claims about Sallay’s health and treatment in custody, opposition political entrepreneurship, religious ritual, and street protest.

The narratives, and framing also evolved over this time. On 3 June, the highest-engagement material is legal in character: the travel ban itself, the CID’s claims about Sallay, and the prospect of the investigation reaching Gotabaya, alongside one widely engaged Sinhala post reporting that Sallay’s lawyers had told court he faced a suicide risk – the first strong custody-related framing. On 4 and 5 June the emotional register turns affective. The most consequential copied Sinhala text from this period describes Sallay as a non-Sinhala war hero, a symbol of the war’s legitimacy, and a man whom patriotic citizens must defend in a difficult hour; a page named Save Mother Lanka posted that text 65 times in under a day, and pushed a companion narrative – that linking Gotabaya and military intelligence to the Easter attacks rests on anti-Gotabaya political hostility rather than evidence – a further 68 times across two days. This specific frame is an interesting one to decode, because they communicate Sallay’s innocence, and simultaneously recast (any, and all) legal scrutiny as ingratitude towards those who defeated the LTTE. The narrative strategically, and tellingly converts a criminal investigation into a loyalty test directed at the military, the nation, and a Sinhala-Buddhist security imaginary within which an intelligence officer stands beyond the reach of a magistrate.

June 6 added Sallay’s treatment-in-custody frame: hunger-strike claims, allegations of cruel or inhumane treatment, inadequate food, and severe psychological distress. Some of this material carries genuine concern which many activists have articulated on social media posts outside the scope of this study: major concern, and condemnation that the state which continues to use the Prevention of Terrorism Act (despite an election promise to repeal it), detention orders, and coercive conditions to punish a suspect before trial. However, the trajectory of the seemingly rights-based framing in the Facebook posts studied is revealing. Posts repeatedly open with due process only to frame counter-accusations – conspiratorial claims about Shani Abeysekara, Dileepa Peiris, the Catholic Church, UK’s Channel 4, the NPP, the JVP, and the Tamil diaspora. The appropriation of rights discourse, and claims functions as a vehicle for impunity rather than a constraint upon it.

By 7 June the discourse turned into, and championed offline mobilisation. Wimal Weerawansa’s post praising Sallay as a wartime intelligence figure drew 37,653 engagements. Sarvajana Balaya announced an afternoon event, and Udaya Gammanpila called supporters to Fort. By 8 June, posts advertised and reported a satyagraha near Colombo Fort railway station, bodhi poojas, monks in attendance, and opposition leaders speaking; the largest pro-Sallay post of the day, from ‘පොහොට්ටුව ඩොට්කොම්’, announced that war heroes had gone before the CID for Sallay. This post generated 39,905 engagements. At this point the posts to Facebook cease to resemble an organic, if not partisan reaction to a legal development, and instead begins to resemble a concerted, coordinated public campaign with offline anchors.

To wit, on 9 June, Namal Rajapaksa posted to Facebook that he had attended the satyagraha for Sallay, condemning what he termed “the arbitrary rule of the current government, which is turning law into lawlessness”. A video of his fuller statement, published on YouTube, compresses the campaign’s entire discursive architecture into under two minutes. War heroes, he argues, are being hunted in a planned manner; the government has directed the police to political ends, eroding public respect for the police and confidence in the judiciary and the law; Sallay is held not by judicial determination but by presidential will. Namal Rajapaksa’s statement opens in the rights, and due-process register – around conducting the investigations – before pivoting to counter-accusation, demanding to know who placed Ibrahim on the JVP’s national list and who provided Zahran’s lawyer, and warning the government not to seize “this war hero” over its problem with Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This intervention matters because it renders explicit what the Facebook posts implied: the defence of Sallay and the defence of the Rajapaksas constitute a single political project, articulated at the protest itself by the dynasty’s heir, with heroisation, rights language, and conspiratorial counter-accusation braided into one statement.

However, June 9 and 10 posts also show counter-mobilisation: posts mocking the satyagraha, attacking Sallay’s defenders, carrying ministerial statements, and claiming the investigation would reach above Sallay to the real mastermind. One cluster, spreading across nine accounts, offers a self-conscious diagnosis of the campaign while it unfolds – the travel ban doubled the panic, it argues, and the fake accounts, bodhi poojas, and media appearances for Sallay followed.

All this said, the engagement data (i.e., reactions, shares, and comments) prevents a reading of this material in favour of Sallay (and the Rajapaksas) as being overwhelmingly positively accepted by those on Facebook. The posts collectively generated 3,224,882 reactions, 620,087 comments, and 424,522 shares. Laughing emojis (Ha ha) as reactions account for around 48% of the total, marginally exceeding likes at 46%, while love reactions were only 4%.

In this capture of posts, laughter frequently functions as ridicule, rejection, informal voting, or ironic contempt: one high-engagement post explicitly codes the heart as standing with Sallay and the laugh as refusing to, while another mocks “Sallay’s mother, Mrs Sallay” beneath repeated laughing emojis. There are at least four overlapping frames in the posts – heroisation of Sallay, due-process defence, accusatory claims that he or those above him directed the attacks, and sarcastic attacks on his defenders. Sinhala humour, irony, sarcasm, and idiom drive much of the engagement, which must not be mistaken for a wave of sympathy – which is to say, the public reaction to the posts indicates the scepticism or even the rejection of the narratives projected.

There appears to be some evidence of coordinated inauthentic behaviour because of the exact duplication of posts: 3,236 posts, or around 42% of the total feature repeated exact-text clusters, and 1,539 posts appear in clusters spanning multiple owners. Some of this reflects ordinary news syndication. Some does not. The clearest campaign-like artefact is a mobilisation message – gather near Colombo Fort railway station for Major General Suresh Sallay, war hero, under hashtags for protecting war heroes and the motherland – appearing 13 times across five owners within a two-minute window on the morning of 9 June. A long heroic text about the Sallay family’s Malay identity and military sacrifice appears 13 times across four owners on 8 June. Individual accounts behave in very suspicious ways: one profile produced 87 near-identical posts within a five-minute burst, and Save Mother Lanka produced 48 copies of a single text in another. This isn’t to say all the posts were somehow coordinated by the SLPP, and by networks partial to Sallay, and the Rajapaksas. There’s significant variation in the posts, underscoring the fact that a varied constellation of accounts participated in the discourse around Sallay – with only some of them acting in a highly coordinated manner.

The travel ban on Gotabaya, given the study of this material, acted as a catalytic legal event. The question of who enabled the 2019 Easter attacks and the question of who benefited from them politically have run on separate tracks for years – vital for the Rajapaksa political narrative, legacy, and future electoral prospects for the SLPP writ large, and Namal Rajapaksa in particular. The magistrate’s order fused them. Once the investigation visibly reached the former President, defending Sallay ceased to be about Sallay alone; it became a proxy defence of the war victory, of military intelligence, and of the security establishment’s effective exemption from the law – a fusion Namal Rajapaksa’s presence at, and speech from the satyagraha rendered unmistakable. The campaign that followed reached for the most powerful, populist emotional registers available in the post-war Sinhala-Buddhist identity register – the wounded war hero, the hunger strike, the bodhi pooja, the monk at the railway station.

There’s a broader point around narrative asymmetry that’s important to end with. A criminal investigation into the murder of hundreds of people should proceed through evidence, judicial process, and institutional accountability. The Facebook posts record the speed and skill with which a court-linked development can be converted into a loyalty and political litmus test – for or against the ranaviru, the Rajapaksas, the Church, the government. By the time Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala spoke in Parliament, a substantial audience had already been primed to hear whatever he had to say, and however he said it, as persecution. Many of the posts launder impunity through the language of rights, due process, judicial independence, patriotism, religious grievance, and ethnic security. These two registers are deliberately braided, and by architects of political communication who know what they are doing. These posts, in the period studied, indicate how quickly the emotional terrain around a key suspect in the Easter Sunday terrorism can be re-engineered to pre-empt accountability. It is a harbinger of what to expect if, and when in the future the investigations involve Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

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A team of officials from the Presidential Secretariat and Public Administration conducted an inspection of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Wijerama residence today, amid controversy over the handover of the state-owned property.

Attorney Manoj Gamage, spokesperson for the former president, refuted recent remarks by Cabinet Spokesperson Minister Nalinda Jayatissa, who claimed Rajapaksa had not yet handed over the residence.

Speaking to the media, Gamage said the delay was caused by officials from state departments, who were responsible for taking inventory of state-owned assets at the property.

“We had requested the relevant departments to conduct an inventory. Only after that would we remove the personal belongings of the former president,” he explained. “However, a government media crew arrived to record video footage, turning this into a public spectacle.”

Gamage insisted the house had not been handed over solely due to administrative delays, not any refusal on their part.

He accused the government of engaging in media theatrics and said formal written communication would be sent to the relevant authorities requesting that proper inventory procedures be followed.

“We don’t want people saying that Mahinda Rajapaksa even took a broom from the Wijerama residence,” Gamage said, calling the situation a deliberate attempt to damage the former president’s reputation.

“Here is the residence, take it over at any time you want,” Gamage told Minister Jayatissa. However he insisted the handing over will only take place after a proper inventory has been conducted.

Gamage also claimed there appeared to be attempts to obstruct the removal of former President Rajapaksa’s personal belongings. “There is no issue here. The government is free to take whatever belongs to the state—but it cannot take items that are not officially state property,” he said. (Newswire)

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Government spokesperson Minister Nalinda Jayatissa accused the opposition of attempting to conceal the real perpetrators of the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, similar to what he alleged was done by the Rajapaksa administration.

Addressing reporters, Jayatissa commented on the no-confidence motion against Deputy Defence Minister Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Aruna Jayasekara. Jayasekara’s role in government is being challenged by the opposition, due to his tenure as Security Forces Eastern Province commander in the lead-up to the attacks, a period that remains under investigation.

In response to a question on whether the government would treat Jayasekara’s case the same as other officials under investigation — including Senior DIG Deshabandu Tennakoon, former IGP Pujith Jayasundara and former SIS chief Nilantha Jayawardena — Jayatissa said the government would not act according to the opposition’s demands.

“We will not fall for these tricks brought about by the opposition from time to time,” he said.

“When investigations were being conducted in a haphazard way, this name was not raised by the Sajith Premadasa faction. Now that we are carrying out investigations properly, to identify not only the mastermind but also those who enabled it politically, they want to link all kinds of incidents to this.”

Jayatissa said the CID is focusing on individuals who failed to act despite having sufficient intelligence before the attacks. He noted that Jayasekara’s name had not been raised during the Parliamentary Investigation Committee hearings or before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry.

“The reason they are suddenly remembering these names is because the opposition wishes to hide the real mastermind and the real accused,” he said. “We earlier thought only the Rajapaksas wished to do this. Now it’s apparent the opposition does too.”

Jayatissa said the government welcomes the no-confidence motion, adding that it would provide an opportunity to reveal information not previously disclosed during investigations. (Newswire)

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Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake alleged in Parliament today that a climate of extremism was deliberately cultivated to facilitate the return of the Rajapaksa regime, which lost power in 2015.

The Minister was speaking during the adjournment debate on the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks.

“The Easter Sunday attack cannot be taken as an isolated incident. There was a need to create a situation for the Rajapaksas to return. On one hand, they attempted this by creating a political rift between President Maithripala Sirisena and Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe. They weakened the government, but it was not sufficient as the 2015 mandate was very strong,” he said.

He claimed that what he termed an “objective situation” was engineered beginning in 2013, with the involvement of intelligence agencies.

“The Rajapaksas created an objective situation. They started this in 2013 by creating and maintaining Sinhala and Muslim extremist groups through intelligence agencies. The culmination of this was similar to the Cambridge Analytica incident,” Rathnayake said. (Newswire)

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The Colombo High Court has ordered the re-convening of the case filed by the Attorney General against Parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa for September 26.

The case, filed by the Attorney General, involves allegations that Rajapaksa received Rs. 70 million from the Indian company Krrish under the pretense of promoting rugby.

Rajapaksa was present in court when the case was taken up today. (Newswire)

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President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has revealed that a Rajapaksa had received compensation for a house in the Sevanagala area, which was destroyed during the May 09 people’s protest in 2022. 

President Dissanayake said that a report is to be compiled soon on the Rajapaksa, who had received the compensation. 

Providing further information, the President said it has been found that the house in question was not owned by this particular Rajapaksa.

“The land deed is under the name of a different person, while the house is under the name of another. However, the compensation has been received by a Rajapaksa,” he said. 

President Dissanayake said he had recently received the report containing this information and that it is yet to be presented to Parliament. 

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made the revelation while addressing a public meeting in Buttala on Monday (31 Mar). (Newswire)

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The Rajapaksa family has decided not to contest the upcoming 2024 General Election.

Former Presidents Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa and former MPs Basil and Chamal Rajapaksa will, thereby, not contest the Parliamentary Election.

However, it is reported that former minister Namal Rajapaksa will lead the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s (SLPP) election campaign and will be a National List nominee.

The 2024 General Election is scheduled for 14 November. (Newswire)

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Presidential candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Namal Rajapaksa stated that the slogan of catching thieves won’t be repeated on political stages under their government.

Addressing an election rally in Matale, Rajapaksa charged that the same group of people who wasted taxpayer money during the Yahapalana government by traveling around the world and auditing accounts, have now come forward as presidential candidates who promise to catch thieves.

They audited accounts at the expense of the taxpayer, only to find that there were no illicit earnings in the Rajapaksas’ accounts, he said.

“Nowadays, many presidents come to catch thieves. Even during the Yahapalana government, they did the same. They formed a committee, gathered everyone who spoke about it, and went after thieves, filing case after case. But in every case, we were acquitted and freed,” Rajapaksa said.

“The current president, who was the prime minister of the Yahapalana government at the time, made a clear statement. He said they searched around the world for the Rajapaksas’ accounts and found no evidence of illicit earnings. That’s why they were freed from the cases. But all those investigations were funded with public money. Perhaps they even took the Rs. 12.5 billion they borrowed for that,” Rajapaksa speculated.

The SLPP presidential candidate pointed out that the slogan of catching thieves is nothing more than a political catchphrase created to deceive the public for personal gain.

“It was purely a political slogan made up for the stage. They even searched our toilets at home looking for the ‘stolen goods.’ They even came to see a toy helicopter in my mother’s Montessori school, claiming it was a real helicopter. These are the same people who misled the public with lies and now seek to govern the country,” he said.

Through a technology-driven procurement process with transparent and competitive tender procedures, corruption and fraud will no longer be election campaign slogans, Rajapaksa said.

“We are removing corruption and fraud from the election stage. We are doing this by introducing technology, bringing in tender procedures, and establishing competitive tender systems under a procurement process, with transparency and quality safeguarded through the use of technology,”

Noting the importance of making global agreements to protect the future economy for the next generation, Rajapaksa said that he is committed to creating 2 million jobs over the next decade in sectors such as information technology, manufacturing, services, and overseas employment. (Newswire)

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President Ranil Wickremesinghe today avoided answering questions posed on the Economic Bankruptcy ruling against the Rajapaksas due to an error in the court case number in the question submitted by Opposition Leader MP Sajith Premadasa.

Addressing the Parliament today, stating that he was responding to the Opposition Leader’s query, President Wickremesinghe replied to the question based on the case number given by the former, which was about a case on the supply of rations for the Trincomalee Prison.

Responding to the President, MP Sajith Premadasa acknowledged his mistake concerning the case number, stating that he would take responsibility for the mistake.

He, however, pointed out that even though there was a mistake with the case number, his question was written clearly mentioning the case details and the names of the Rajapaksas. 

“I have clearly raised a question on the Supreme Court’s ruling which held former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, former Finance Ministers Mahinda Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa,  former Governors of the Central Bank W D Lakshman and Ajith Nivard Cabraal, former Secretary to the Treasury S R Attygala, former Secretary to the President P B Jayasundere, and Monetary Board member S S W Kumarasinghe responsible for the economic crisis faced by Sri Lanka as they had mishandled the economy and violated the fundamental rights of the people,” MP Premadasa said. 

Questioning if the President was incapable of reading, the Opposition Leader revealed instead of reading the facts, the President had spent time finding a mistake with the court case number.

“It is regrettable to see you disregarding the question by finding a technical fault with the case number and providing an explanation to just entertain the Parliament. I have no intention of disrespecting you, but it is beyond your intelligence,” he said. 

Pointing out that the President himself had chastised the decisions of the former Gotabaya Rajapaksa government in Parliament, the Opposition leader questioned why the President was now scrambling to protect the group. (NewsWire)

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Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) has praised the recent ruling of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka on the economic crisis. 

Last week (Nov 14), the Supreme Court held former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and several other officials from his government, including former Finance Ministers Mahinda and Basil Rajapaksa, and former Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivad Cabraal, responsible for mishandling the economic crisis.

The court issued its verdict after taking up for consideration the petition filed by Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) along with activists Chandra Jayaratne, Jehan Canagaretna and Julian Bolling in the public interest calling for action against persons responsible for the prevailing crisis in Sri Lanka.

Commenting on the court ruling, former President CBK said even though the court has named a few of those responsible for the economic crisis, there were more people linked to them who are also to be blamed but have not been named by the court. 

CBK further said this was also a learning point for future leaders of the country, adding “future generations will now learn how to properly govern a nation and be a leader who works for the nation and not for one’s self.”

She further suggested that the incumbent government must work on the Supreme Court’s ruling to recover the money mishandled by the group or seize their illegal assets and use it to repay Sri Lanka’s loans. (NewsWire)

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