Poetry, Prose and Satire: Exploring violence, war, religion and peace in Sri Lanka

In light of a Government unable and unwilling to investigate violence against journalists and independent media, satire is one way in which violent events, processes and individuals can be held up for public scrutiny more frequently. In the first submission to the site, Banyan News Reporters publishes a piece on how TV Remote Controllers are a threat to National Security. The submission notes that,

“The television remote controller poses a serious threat to the country’s national security, the government has determined. A new law will soon be introduced to register and regulate this electronic item. The ubiquitous gadget helps unpatriotic persons to change the channel when matters of national importance are being broadcast on state TV channels. This, in turn, deprives the government its rightful opportunity to address and inform all its citizens, security advisors have pointed out.”

Read Remote Controllers a threat to National Security.

Writing in for the first time, Valkyrie in From the ‘sole representative’ to the ‘sole alternative’: Justice for, and within the Tamil Community asks pertinent questions and ends on a thought-provoking note,

“What kind of future do Tamil politico-armed groups have? Since the usefulness of these groups to the government is dependent upon the existence of the LTTE, what would their position be in a world without the LTTE? We can venture to guess that it is unlikely they will be able to eschew government patronage and become legitimate advocates for the rights of the Tamil people and at the same time survive politically within a majoritarian state that is unwilling to acknowledge the concerns and fulfill the legitimate demands of its minorities.”

The missing Hussein in the White House site

Obama’s gone and radically changed the White House website. Gone are the days of static content and a conservative look. The new website embraces the new technologies and the spirit of his campaign – it’s very Web 2.0, mobile and social networking oriented.

However, I noticed a curious anomaly in content. Barack’s page puts down his name as Barack H. Obama. I first thought this must be the convention used across the site – first name + middle initial + last name.

Yet Vice President Biden’s page has his full name Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

I wonder why the Hussein in Barack in hidden?

Crowdsourcing Obama’s inauguration

CNN, using Microsoft’s amazing Photosynth, aims to crowdsource a 3D vista of Barack Obama’s Presidential inauguration on 20th January 2009. This will be the most digitised Presidential inauguration in history, and I suspect many cable TV networks will rely heavily on the digital content generated by those present, in addition to their own content, in their coverage of this historical event. 

I’ve followed the development of Photosynth for a long time, captivated by its potential to revolutionise the way we manage and see photography. It still runs best on Windows, but a new Silverlight based plugin allows Macs to view synths. I haven’t tried Photosynth on Parallels, but I doubt if it will run better than the Silverlight plugin for OS X.

I am interested in and have briefly written on the potential of synths to capture locations of human rights violations and other sites of violence, a forensic tool crowdsourced as it were. It could be an interesting ethnographical tool for anthropologists, if one were able to distinguish photographs taken by various identity groups with a vested interested in the ownership of or access to a contested site (say a temple). 

Integrate Photosynth with Flickr, and you’ll also be able to find some interesting mashups of popular locations around the world, like the Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower, akin to the synth of the Roman Colosseum.

Citizen journalism on Groundviews and Vikalpa’s YouTube channel interrogates assassination of Lasantha Wickremetunge

The Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and one of Sri Lanka’s best known journalists Lasantha Wickremetunge was murdered on 8th January 2009 en route to work. He was beaten and shot repeatedly and succumbed to his injuries in hospital. The first post on Groundviews on the assassination can be read here.

Lasantha was 50 at the time of his assassination. No group to date has claimed responsibility. In a tremendously powerful and moving editorial published posthumously the Sunday after he was killed, Lasantha notes that “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.“

For its part, the Rajapakse administration points to a mysterious armed force hell bent on discrediting the government. It has done what it does best – expressed outrage, ordered a full investigation and appointed a committee to investigate the attacks. Yet it conveniently forgets, inter alia, that the Cabinet subcommittee to look into the grievances of journalists set up in June 2008 is largely forgotten today. No one knows whether it exists, how to reach it, what it does, or came up with as recommendations to protect journalists. Journalist J.S. Tissanaiyagam still languishes in jail on the most ludicrous charges under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The government is silent on his plight and on-going case, despite widespread local and international condemnation and calls for his release.

Well over eleven thousand came to Groundviews from 8th to 13th January alone to read and actively engage with content published on Lasantha’s assassination and what it portends for independent media and democracy in Sri Lanka.

Amongst regular voices was the former President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge, who wrote in to the site in response to a comment left by Dayan Jayatilleka, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. You can follow this conversation here. This was the first comment by the former President on Lasantha’s murder featured in any local and international media.

Also significant was the thrust and parry of debate between Indi Samarajiva, Sri Lanka’s best known and perhaps most read blogger (and architect of the country’s leading blog aggregation site Kottu) and Dayan Jayatilleke. Follow the conversation thread through to its interesting denouement here.

Groundviews was also honoured to receive strong protests in verse from award-winning and internationally acclaimed Sri Lankan poets. Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, winner of the Gratiaen Prize in 2007, Malinda Seneviratne and Indran Amirthanayagam wrote strong poems against violence and Lasantha’s assassination. They were joined by Cry Lanka, an anonymous poet. Most recently, Francesca wrote in from the US. Born in Sri Lanka, Francesca was moved to write about Lasantha’s killing from the point of view of someone from the diaspora. Her poem is here.

Several others wrote in expressing their disgust, shock, sadness and concern. Lionel Bopage, a former General Secretary of the JVP states that,

These assassinations and the repressive culture being imposed upon the Sri Lankan society, culminating with the killing of Mr Wickramatunga, should provide the impetus to stimulate all political forces and individuals in Sri Lanka and overseas, who are committed to protecting the human and democratic rights of its people, to come together and oppose this state of fascism.

Prof. Sumanasiri Liyanage, who teaches political economy at the University of Peradeniya, suggests an alternative proposal for our consideration when he notes that,

Attack on Sirasa and killing of Lasantha Wickramatunga have made me convinced once again my earlier proposal that any protest and opposition to the present government should be a part of a bigger political exercise aiming at naming a non-party peoples’ candidate with minimum transitional program that include the change of the constitution in order to make the state more accommodative, power-dispersed and the politicians more accountable through built-in checks and balances.

Groundviews also featured several videos on Lasantha’s assassination taken from the Vikalpa YouTube video channel. These videos include interviews with civil society, coverage of his funeral as well as the first hours after he was admitted to the Kalubowila hospital.

As a mark of protest and respect Groundviews changed its homepage on the day of Lasantha’s burial to black, featuring links to key articles on his murder.

This site exists to demonstrate that it is possible, using web media strategies, to create spaces for voices at risk to be heard and archived for posterity. In a small but significant way, the original content and conversations on Lasantha’s assassination on this site rigorously interrogated issues of culpability, impunity, democratic governance, media freedom and violence.

At the end of the day, Lasantha’s dead and gone. Yet through these evolving and vital conversations on the web and Internet, he will continue to inspire us.

Sanjana Hattotuwa
Editor
Groundviews

Dialog OfficeNet+ rocks on a holiday

This is not a scientific evaluation of Dialog’s WiMax actual speeds, which in the past and even today have simply not matched advertised speeds. Being Thai Pongal perhaps, speeds today on Dialog’s OfficeNet+ connection are terrific and are the best speeds I have ever experienced in Sri Lanka. 

This is a screenshot of a 480p HD Quicktime movie trailer streaming off Apple’s website. Click for larger image.

The following is a screenshot of Transmission downloading a movie. Clearly, Dialog isn’t blocking P2P traffic today, but on numerous occasions during a normal working day, I’ve had problems logging into, seeing the status of others and talking on Skype on this connection. Click for larger image.

For a far more rigorous analysis of Dialog’s HomeNet+ connection (and other ‘broadband’ connections), check out the results of Lirneasia’s Quality of Service study here.

YouTube for anger and activism in Sri Lanka

Largely on account of two short videos capturing reactions to the assassination of the Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and senior journalist Lasantha Wickremetunge in Sinhala and English, Vikalpa’s YouTube Channel was the 59th most viewed channel on YouTube yesterday. At the time of writing this post, the Sinhala video has been viewed 1,846  times and the English 1,249 times. 

This is the second time Vikalpa YouTube channel has entered the top 100 list on YouTube amongst Reporter’s Channel worldwide. The first was for its coverage commemorating the anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka in July 2008. 

It’s really horrible that it takes an event of such a tragic nature to propel our work higher in this list, but it does also demonstrate once again that short videos on YouTube in particular, and online video in general, can be a powerful platform for activism and advocacy. Videos on Vikalpa’s Channel have been viewed tens of thousands of times. Videos on a site I created to archive online 30 second spots commemorating the July 1983 riots that were produced for and first broadcast on TV have also generated thousands of views. 

Vikalpa’s YouTube video channel reaches and generates far more people and interest respectively than its website, which gets around 350 readers on average a day. This is significant in a country that does not enjoy good bandwidth (most of the viewers and readers are from Sri Lanka). It suggests that online video – especially short videos – can be are are re-distributed, cross-featured, emailed the links to, embedded, downloaded and copied and if their license allows it, re-worked and re-edited to create viral campaigns, including those on social networks such as Facebook and Myspace, that can meaningfully strengthen real world activism and advocacy against violence.

New and powerful voices for media freedom in Sri Lanka?

Some of the best writing on the recent arson attack on MBC / MTV studios comes from two renown voices in the Sri Lankan blogosphere.

Indi’s article The Media War is a very good counterpoint to the analysis of given by Dayan Jayatilleka in my interview with him yesterday when I asked him about the egregious decline in media freedom in the country. It is also a post that has generated a lot of interesting commentary, with points suggested by A Voice in Colombo for example that cannot be easily dismissed.

In MTV/MBC – Looking back, Dinidu takes a impartial look at the arson attack noting that,

Sirasa was different in their reportage. When all the channels were giving “Ranaviruwo” kind of biased romanticized reporting, Sirasa was either following a removed stance, or a pro-UNP agenda. To say otherwise, or to argue that they (or any other media in this country, for that matter) is unbalanced, is naivety at its highest. But if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Nobody should take the jungle law into their own jungle hands and execute an operation of execution.

After what can be best captured as an insider-partial relationship for over 7 years with leading media freedom organisations in Sri Lanka, it’s sad to see that most members are around 45. They are mostly male with token female membership and participation. They are all left of centre. They are all trade unionists and street fighters. They are mostly computer illiterate. They are all seasoned journalists, but they have little understanding of and interest in web and online advocacy strategies. As I have told them repeatedly they are, sadly, already advocacy and campaign dinosaurs in a digital age – unable to inspire new voices to join their cause, unable to reach out to new younger members, unable to diversify their membership including on gendered lines and unable to leverage the web and online communications to strengthen their campaigns and advocacy. Worse, recent allegations against key members in this community has even further vitiated their appeal and effectiveness especially amongst web savvy youth.

Indi and Dinidu I don’t believe have ever participated in any media freedom rally. They are not members of any media freedom advocacy organisation. This is a good thing. Independent and new voices partial to the freedom of expression need to complement other more well established voices to clamour for an end to this mindless violence against media that does not toe a particular line. Yet, it is the nature of bloggers to have a short attention span and move on from issues they have written on. This may be the case with both Indi and Dinidu and their respective blogs. But the comments to Indi’s post at the time of writing and Dinidu’s analysis strengthens the argument made by Evgeny Morozov on openDemocracy.net,

Many less radical institutions – governments, NGOs, think tanks – are struggling to address the same challenge, unable to respond to the rapidly shifting balance of power between the individual and the institution radically disrupted by the Internet. In today’s ultra-networked world, an unaffiliated individual with a laptop and an Internet connection is often more influential and resourceful than an organization with a staff of twenty and a fax machine was only twenty years ago.

UDHR: A historical record of the drafting process

It’s websites such as the new UN archive on the drafting process that led up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that showcase the potential of the web to make information otherwise inaccessible instantly available globally.

The UDHR 60 years on continues to be a bedrock for democracy. The documents archived on this site from the UN’s discussions leading up to the final version offer a unique insight into the workings of the UN.

More broadly, similar projects such Google’s already mammoth newspaper archives (see Old news is good news) and the British Library’s Turning the Pages initiative indicate the breath and depth of a library that a little over a decade ago simply could not have been imagined.

A library called the world wide web.

How can, nay, how must we ensure that the information and knowledge on the web is used to build peace?

Media Re:public – Interrogating new and online media

Media Re:public is a series of papers exploring the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment. As it’s website describes the project,

The transformation of the media world is well underway, facilitated by the spread of digital tools. A myriad of innovative new media organizations have sprung up to take advantage of the opportunities that stem from low-cost distribution networks. Meanwhile the economic base of many of the large media companies continues to erode. Despite the demonstrated success of many new media enterprises, the euphoria over the rise of participatory media has been tempered by concerns over the quality and credibility of online media, the possible fragmentation of audiences, a decline in editorial standards and the persistent challenge of effectively reporting the news. Over the past year, researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society have reached out to a broad range of media experts to help in this assessment of the changes in new media over the past several years and to take a sober look at the successes and ongoing challenges.

Spearheaded by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, there’s an overview paper, seven issue papers and four case studies. Download them all here.

It’s old, but Blogging, Journalism & Credibility Final Report from January 2005, also from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, is a great backgrounder to these papers.

Seriously blogging after 32 years of journalism: DBS Jeyaraj

“My writing has been appearing on the web for many years now. I’ve also been associated with some websites like www.tamilweek.com, www.transcurrents.com and www.federalidea.com for the past few years. In that sense I do have been on line for quite a while. Yet , there’s a reason for this blog. Upon reflection I find that most of the stuff posted on these websites were actually not intended for the web. Most if not all were written for newspapers, newsmagazines and journals. These articles and news stories were posted concurrently on the websites. So these were not really “blogs” meant for the web but actually re-productions from the print media. Now I want to write specifically for the web instead of posting print media articles.”

A familiar voice in traditional / mainstream media in Sri Lanka has turned to blogging. DBS Jeyaraj is one of Sri Lanka’s best known political commentators and military analysts. His writing has been widely published in news media in Sri Lanka.

David’s blog can be accessed here. A good profile of the journalist, by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) can be heard streamed on the web here.

Though there is little or no legal protection for bloggers (in comparison to MSM journalists and even freelance journalists in Sri Lanka) I sincerely hope that that David’s reasoned entry into online journalism encourages and inspires other journalists to consider web and online media as a way to strengthen independent and investigative journalism in Sri Lanka.