Sri Lankan police have confirmed that Dan Priyasad, head of the Nawa Sinhale National Movement and member of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), has died on the morning of 23rd April after he was shot in Colombo by two unidentified assailants.
The 39-year-old was fatally shot multiple times in the chest and shoulders, in front of the ‘Laksanda Sevana’ apartment complex in Meethotumulla the night before. The two unidentified assailants fled the crime scene by motorcycle. At least three suspects have since been arrested by the Sri Lankan police.
Priyasad was receiving treatment in the Intesnsive Care Unit (ICU) at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, where he eventually succumbed to his injuries this morning.
Priyasad’s rise to infamyas a Sinhala nationalist began in the years following the 2009Mullivaikkal genocide, when he began slandering Muslim and Tamils in online posts on Facebook under the guise of “protecting the nation”. This soon led to him launching a more intense extremist campaign.
In 2016, Priyasad referred to himself as the “Saviour of the Sinhalese” and threatened to carry out a suicide bombing to eliminate Muslims in Sri Lanka when speaking at a protest at Fort Railway Station. The police arrested him following complaints made by several parliamentarians for the police to take action against him.
In 2017, Priyasad was named by the Centre for Human Rights and Research (CHR) in a complaint to the Ministry of Order as one of the key men that led the Sinhalese mob in storming a United Nations safehouse where 31 Rohingya refugees were being sheltered. He was noted as a “Sinhala extremist” and acted in violation of the court- imposed sanctions that were placed on him following his previous arrest in 2016 for threatening to bomb Muslims in Sri Lanka. The report by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka read;
“CHR has also brought to the notice of the Law and Order Ministry that one of the men leading the mob was in violation of strict bail conditions. JDS has seen a copy of a complaint made by Attorney at law Nizam Shainaz, which shows that Sinhala extremist Dan Priyasad has violated sanctions imposed by courts in December 2016 when he was released after police arrested him for mob violence."
In the aftermath of the 2019 Easter Sunday Bombings, anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment carried out by Sinhalese mobs ran rampant across the island. Navin Dissanayake, the Minister of Plantation Industries at the time, said that “hard- line Buddhists” were responsible for the “organised” and “systematic” attacks on Muslim-owned businesses and homes. He named Dan Priyasad, along with two other Sinhala nationalists, as leaders of “extremist Buddhist” organizations and those responsible for inciting riots and anti-Muslim sentiment.
In response to the Aragalaya movement in April 2022 against the Sri Lankan government, a pro-government march was held by then- president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s supporters and Sinhala Buddhist monks. During the march, Priyasad warned that they had “collected the details of all engaging in protests” and threatened that severe action would be taken against them. On 9th May 2022, he was arrested for attacking peaceful protesters and was briefly held in further remand for breaching his former bail conditions on multiple occasions.
Priyasad’s assassination in a public shooting incident is one among a series of recent killings that reflect a spike in violent crime across the South this year.
Other killings have included the assassinations of notable underworld criminals such as Aruna Vidanagamage and Ganemulla Sanjeewa. Similarly to Vidanagamage, Priyasad was known to have links to Pro-Rajapaksa factions. The escalation in violence has occurred at the same time that the National People’s Power (NPP) government has cracked down on the Rajapaksa clan.
Earlier this year, the Minister for Public Security and Parliamentary affairs, Ananda Wijepala, claimed that the murders of the underworld criminals linked to investigations in the 2019 Eastern Sunday bombings, following longstanding reports linking the Rajapaksas to individuals involved in the bombings.
