evidence: Later that night, the Prime Minister’s private residence was gutted through arson under suspicious circumstances. An enraged mob surrounded it, likely provoked by social media alerts and live broadcast of brutal assaults by paramilitary police on journalists filming peaceful protests near his home. The Prime Minister had resisted demands for his resignation. He believed he could secure his position or even assume the Presidency following Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s removal. Wily as he is, he miscalculated. [...] During the violence on the afternoon and night of 9th May, the security forces passively watched the assaults and destruction but subsequently, over 2,500 persons were arrested including non-party affiliated protestors and cadre of the left-wing Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP—Peoples Liberation Front), simply from name lists furnished to the local police force by the President’s aggrieved partymen. [...] As they could not get near the President, they opted to march upon his office. The Presidential Secretariat faces the Indian Ocean – where ships in the distance wait to dock at Colombo’s harbour – and the Chinese-built ‘Colombo International Financial City’ rises from the sea, as a zone of exception for global capital free from taxation and regulation of money flows.