When officials tried to demolish Dutch Bay Coffio, a cafe in Trincomalee town, local monks stopped them.
Coastal Conservation Department, or CCD, officers were removing illegal structures along the island’s coastal belt — part of their routine work. In Trincomalee alone, about a hundred were removed this year.
On 4 November, the CCD issued a removal notice to the beachfront cafe. The cafe is on land claimed by Mihindupura Kalyani Maithri, the Sambuddha Baudhdha Vihara’s chief monk. His temple is just up the road, at Fort Frederick’s gate.
The monk and cafe operator stalled, promising to demolish it themselves within a week, or produce a stay order from the courts. But they failed to do either. The CCD then prepared to demolish it on 17 November, this Monday.
The cafe stands on a 40 perch plot in the heart of Trinco town, facing the cerulean blue ocean. A small dhamma school taught children there in the 1950s. It’s long gone. In the decades since, policemen remember navy sailors soliciting sex workers there during the war, while threewheel drivers fret about the drug users getting high there. Occasionally, tuition masters even taught maths and science classes.
The only remnant of past Buddhist activity is an old Buddha statue beneath a Bo tree.
Local police say there wasn’t anyone to “so much as light a lamp” there in the past few decades.
There was no structure on the 40 perch plot till the cafe was built in 2023. The land use survey states that the land contains “part of a Bo maluwa and casuarina plantation.”
Then on Sunday, the 16th, a day before the planned CCD demolition, building started. Monks — both local and from out of town — and lay Buddhists, started to construct a new structure on the plot.
The CCD was alarmed. The cafe is already an unauthorised building within the no-build coastal conservation zone. More construction on the property — for any purpose — can’t happen without authorisation from the CCD and municipal authorities. The CCD complained to the Inner Harbour police, and constables accompanied them to the site that night itself.
The police and CCD pleaded with the monks to halt construction until the next day, when they could discuss the legalities of the matter. The monks refused. The situation turned tense, and the crowd grabbed the phones of journalists trying to cover the incident.
A new Buddha statue emerged from a car and was placed on the land. But a battery of calls to the government by Tamil politicians, lawyers, and activists changed the game. Ananda Wijepala, the public security minister, ordered the statue’s removal. The police worried the situation might cause a riot.
When the statue was removed, monks assaulted the police. One senior police officer sports an arm injury. The monks too claim they were assaulted. No one was arrested.
Seething sasana
Monks in the district seethe at what they feel is the police’s audacity. On Sunday night they came out to back Maithri, the monk who claims the contested plot, and did so throughout the week.
“This is a problem between the Sinhala police and the Sinhala monks,” says Aluthoya Sadatissa, the chief monk at the China Bay temple.
At Maithri’s neighbouring temple, the Gokanna Raja Maha Vihara, chief monk Deepavansa argues that temple land can be used for any activity that doesn’t violate the dharma. “Temples in the north-east are struggling as there aren’t many Sinhalese villages around us.”
The monk points to farmland held by temples in the South, where income is generated to maintain the temple.
“State support for Buddhism means allowing us to do [commercial activities], and ensuring the necessary environment for their conduct. Maybe the state can even consider generating income through investments from Colombo for us.”
Monks held a press conference on Wednesday. Kalyani Maithri arrived from the hospital, after having admitted himself. Monks and government officials decided to maintain the status quo at an emergency meeting. Photos: The Examiner
Deepavansa warns that they voted in the NPP government last year to eradicate corruption, not to change the relationship between Buddhism and the state.
Maithri, referred to by many monks as ‘podi hamuduruwo’, is in his early 20s. He inherited the Sambuddha Bauddha temple after his chief monk passed away in 2021.
Maithri claims the cafe was run for the sole purpose of generating income for the temple, and to save funds for his long-term plan of reopening the beachfront dhamma school. According to the monk, Sunday’s Buddha statue erection was part of this plan, and was unrelated to the following day’s cafe demolition order.
Monks in Trinco say they received an invitation for Sunday about two days prior. Maithri sent this invitation to monks around the island, including Balangoda Kassapa. Kassapa, a famous YouTuber, has been branded a racist.
And five days before sending the invitations out, Maithri was at the Inner Harbour police, objecting to the CCD’s impending cafe demolition.
A law unto oneself
Sunday wasn’t Dutch Bay Coffio’s first run-in with the law. Government officials in Trincomalee say the cafe breaches the law as it’s located within the CCD’s no-build zone. Despite this restriction, the cafe was first set up in 2023 with initial investment from L.T. Perera, temple lay committee’ secretary and son-in-law of an ex-UNP local councillor.