A novel use for mobile phones: Recording oneself being raped

ICTs in general 1 Minute

Press reports indicate that Sri Lanka’s new Inspector General of Police has a novel idea for the use of mobile phones.

Inspector General Jayantha Wickremeratne, who assumed duties last week, says camera phones could play a bigger role in crime busting.

“If someone comes to rape you, use your mobile phone to record it,” he said addressing journalists in Sri Lanka’s hill capital, Kandy yesterday.

What an amazing idea! So all the victim has to do is to, among other things,:

(a) Ask the would be rapist to hang in there (no pun intended) while the phone is suitably positioned, the camera switched on and recording begins
(b) Take frequent time outs from the act of rape to ensure that the recording captures the rapist’s face and the actual act, without which of course the footage would be useless
(c) Ask the rapist permission to keep the possession of the camera phone and the footage of the rape, so that it can be subsequently used as evidence

I wonder what other ideas our genius IGP has up his sleeve?

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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12 thoughts on “A novel use for mobile phones: Recording oneself being raped”

  1. We also can have a web site to include all those pictures and films so that the rapist could be identified by the public.

    What a way to combat crime? Technology at its best.

  4. Deane,

    That’s certainly one way of looking at it. Mind you, this is the bloke in charge of looking into all that’s wrong with the rule of law. I feel better already.

  6. It’s not funny when we are PAYING this joker’s salary and also bear the enormous cost of his upkeep — bullet proof cars, Colombo 7 bungalow, security car fleet, etc, etc. The JOKE IS ON US!

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