The arrest of the ‘blogger’ in Sri Lanka: Crowd-sourcing trumps traditional media follow up

Ayubowan, a blog I didn’t know of before, helpfully posted a screen grab of a post from Gossip Lanka, a blog I also didn’t know of before, on the recent arrest of a ‘blogger’ in Sri Lanka that had many concerned. Gossip Lanka’s post is in Sinhala and doesn’t render at all on my Mac, which is why Ayubowan’s screen grab is helpful. The post avers in Sinhala that,

A few days ago, a derogatory email, also containing five nude photos, were sent to the Secretary of Defense and the President. Resulting CID investigations probed the IP address to ascertain the sender. It was discovered that the email was sent from a cybercafe in Matale. Based upon further investigations, the Police were able to apprehend the individual who was a regular customer of the cybercafe and owned the account used to send the email. However, the suspect vehemently denied he had sent the email in question. “This must have been done by someone to set me up” he said. The Police then asked who this could be. It was then the suspect said that his password was with his former girlfriend, who was not on good terms with him.

The Police then questioned the suspect’s girlfriend, who let known in her fear that she had given the password to her new boyfriend. She also told Police that her new boyfriend had set out to teach her old boyfriend a lesson.

Gayan Rajapakse is the name of her new boyfriend, and he admitted that he had sent the email. He will be in remand till the 6th under the instructions of the Matale District Courts.

This version is corroborated, also in Sinhala, by Web Alochana, an identity I read and trust. As Web Alochana notes, it is still not clear what the exact nature of the threat to the Defense Secretary and the President was.

It is not yet confirmed whether Gayan Rajapakse is a blogger, though he could still turn out to be one. His actions deservedly put him in the hands of the law and cannot be condoned. However, sending an email is emphatically not the same as publishing “offensive and defamatory comments regarding the President and the Secretary of Defense through a website he was operating”, which is what the Daily Mirror first reported and in turn gave rise to fears that a blogger had been arrested in the context of Sri Lanka’s atrocious media freedom. The Daily Mirror’s follow up story the day after also failed to mention that the suspect had been arrested over an email.

There has been to my knowledge no further reporting by the Daily Mirror on this incident. Leading Sri Lankan bloggers, justifiably alarmed, wrote a number of posts such as this one by Indi Samarajiva to find out more information on the incident that were also picked up by Global Voices Online. And it’s on comment threads on these posts, and on the blogosphere, that the incident was probed deeper and a more comprehensive account determined.

It’s an interesting model of crowd-sourcing a story, and one that the Daily Mirror and other traditional print media are well advised to study. The Guardian in England has already shown how this works to hold government accountable.

1000 posts on Groundviews: Bearing witness, shaping peace

Exactly three years after its launch, Groundviews published its 1000th post today. In it Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu identifies the site with quality debate and asks citizens to use it to canvass their ideas for constitutional reform, governance, human rights and the economy and whatever else they see as constituting essential elements of an agenda for change and reform.

Over three years, Groundviews has borne witness to that which traditional print and electronic media did not, and for well-known reasons, could not. Post-war for example, our path-breaking coverage of the situation facing IDPs in Menik Farm was picked up and featured on leading domestic and international media, including theNew York Times, Al Jazeera and the BBC. The wealth of debate and submissions online already makes Groundviews unique as an online resource and platform for engaging discussion in Sri Lanka. We are globally recognised as an authoritative voice on Sri Lanka and were the first to feature a mobile version, and the first to leverage social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

At a conservative average word count per submission, we now feature well over one and a half million words on the site of original content. Recently, we hosted the world premiere of a short film on one of Sri Lanka’s least known communities of African origin. Banyan News Reporters, a series of satirical articles on key issues related to war, human rights and peace has generated a cult following, and sui generis in Sri Lanka as an innovative way to flag issues of significant concern in cycles of violence. Groundviews has commissioned award winning Sri Lankan poets and dramatists to bear witness to violence. The site has also featured compelling and innovative photojournalism that explores, post-war, hope for a just and enduring peace amongst our citizens. A series of articles commemorating the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983 and the race riots of 1958, along with a series of short-form videos, remain invaluable resources for the student of conflict resolution and the discernible historian.

Over 160 authors have contributed to the 1000 posts published on the site to date. There are over 9,300 comments to date generated by this original content, penned by from those as diverse as senior diplomats in government and retired civil servants to university students and those writing into online media for the first time in English. These comments alone feature nearly one million words. Framed by our progressive editorial guidelines, these comments are invaluable insights from citizens in Sri Lanka and from the diaspora unique to the site. For example, The Internment – A Collective Punishment? by Dr. Devanesan Nesiah has been read over twenty four thousand times and mind-bogglingly generated well over sixty thousand words of critical comments through over 140 comments to date.

Our 1000th post is a significant milestone in a quest to define journalism as it should be in Sri Lanka, and a peace with dignity for all which we believe is so much more than the absence of war.

We invite you to join us.

Mobiles, new media and citizen journalism in Kashmir

Photo credit: BBC World Service

Kashmir has, according to a new BBC World Service documentary, the highest rate of mobile phone usage per capita in India although services were only introduced in 2003. As the BBC reporter points out, without mobile phone services there would be no cyber resistance. And there’s the irony, for it is this largely mobile phone based cyber resistance that is today documenting human rights abuses in the region, and serving to bolster international attention on a region that is tremendously difficult and dangerous for traditional news media to cover in a sustained manner.

When I first wrote about citizen journalism in Kashmir I noted,

Of the hundreds of videos on YouTube, I am positive that one won’t get any context, a sense of history or impartiality. That’s still the realm of professional journalism and the more committed citizen journalist. What one does get are snapshots of a polity and society mired in conflict, where ordinary people, with no training whatsoever in journalism, are capturing vital moments, people, events, places and processes that define their lives and in doing so, are collectively producing an oral and visual history.

This BBC World documentary is an excellent production, that speaks with youth recording the violence in their daily lives through mobiles, and putting it up on YouTube for posterity. It asks hard questions, and with revealing answers. For example, it is confirmed that security agencies monitor mobile phone conversations and IP addresses, even though no arrests have been made to date over the nature of the content posted online by cyber activists. The resulting fear psychosis is clearly brought out, and yet the responses by some of the cyber activists as to why they do what they do, at great risk to personal safety and security, are also hugely inspiring.

It is remarkable that the mother of the slain mobile phone salesman Shaheed Tanveer, who sees the video of her son’s killing for the first time in the presence of the BBC journalist, comes out strongly in favour of keeping the video online as a record of what happened. It is the same sentiment that Neda Agha-Soltan’s mother expressed earlier this year when she said, “I don’t want people to forget her.”

The BBC World Service podcast can be downloaded as a MP3 here and related photos can be seen here. New media in Kashmir documents just one example, Iran this year being the other outstanding one, of how mobile phones and sites like YouTube – first created without any intention of helping human rights and democracy – are today platforms and devices for ordinary (and often even illiterate) citizens to record their lives. It is arguable whether this is professional journalism as we know it through even the BBC itself. It is irrefutable however that this new content is changing our perspectives on this beautiful yet violent region.

And that’s a good thing.

The Mobile Phone Jirga: Supporting Rule of Law in Afghanistan with ODR

My friend Colin Rule’s put up this presentation on the use of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) using mobiles in Afghanistan around which he and I had several rounds of email discussion. I have championed the use of mobiles in ODR for years, and it’s good to see initiatives such as this use infrastructure already present on the ground rather than rely on the introduction of PC’s and associated infrastructure to make ODR work.

In several rounds of interesting discussions over email with Colin as well as Lin Wells in the development of this proposal, I flagged the following points related to ODR and competing legal systems in the country, and the use of mobile technology to facilitate dispute resolution at the community level.

• Can we talk about the Rules of Law in Afghanistan? I think the problems we face would be that much easier if Law was, as it is in the UK, a jurisprudence based not on competing ethno-religious interpretations of Islamic scripture. In Afghanistan, you have justice systems that condone stoning as a form of punishment, and such abominations as this, signed by the good Mr. Karzai himself.
• And how will the project deal with tensions between competing Islamic justice systems such as the Hanafi code or and the ultra-conservative Salafist code?” I see the central challenge of m-jirgas as one that is able to locate dispute resolution within these competing interpretations, without necessarily prefacing what we (of a more liberal mindset) see as progressive? It’s actually easier said than done.
• Given the abysmal literacy in the country, I really don’t think the publication of the first Dari and Pashto Legal Glossary makes the slightest impact on the ground. How about recording these definitions to a system where the caller can get to definition, or peruse this glossary, by using her / his voice through a telephone (allowing for on-demand access of this information even by illiterate citizens)? Could this be a simple idea (the software platforms actually exist) that furthers ODR?
• My understanding is that there are competing Islamic justice systems such as the Hanafi code and the ultra-conservative Salafist code. Again, does m-jirga negotiate differences between these schools, does it facilitate dispute resolution within these schools or does it help introduce a new justice system? To avoid the pitfalls of mission creep, and worse, the perception of something m-jirga is not, I strongly suggest we need to be very clear in how we frame our idea, approaches and innovation.
• Technically, the IVR system will need to have a way in which recorded messages can be rewound and fast forwarded on demand, which is not an existing feature of many IVR platforms.

Peace on Facebook

The Persuasive Technology Lab of Stanford University seems to have teamed up with Facebook to create a dedicated page on Facebook celebrating initiatives and conversations using and on Facebook in support of peace.

http://peace.facebook.com is in and of itself not a tool for peacebuilding, and does not for example point to the platform’s use in Egypt to stand up against a repressive, dictatorial government, as reported by the New York Times in January.

The page does link to how Facebook was used to organise against FARC, against crime in London, and its integration in a documentary on children in Uganda. I have also written earlier about pathbreaking uses of  Facebook’s in Sri Lanka to strengthen dissent and critical discussions.

Do you know of any other meaningful examples that use Facebook as a central tool for peacebuilding or in a peace process?

The premier location on the web for progressive content and debates on post-war Sri Lanka

Post-war, Groundviews has fast become the most frequented website in Sri Lanka for progressive, civil debate over content critically analyzing peace, governanc, democracy and other vital issues. There is no comparable website to date in the country, even amongst mainstream media on the web.

The staggering volume of sui generis content on Groundviews, since 2006 and rapidly growing, is invaluable for researchers, policy-makers, civil society, donors, journalists and students of peace, reconciliation and conflict resolution.

Please keep in mind that the number of readers and comments noted below are accurate as of 17 October 2009, and capture submissions over the past three weeks only. The entire site now features well over one and a half million words of original content and over 8,955 comments.

Delusions of (power) devolution: Searching post–Prapa possibilities by Suren Raghavan was read over 25,557 times and generated over 77 comments. Oshadee Nirmala Iddamalgoda, Susantha, wijayapala, Niranjan, Disgusted and SomewhatDisgusted (yes, they are two very different identities!) and others debate post-war triumphalism, Sinhala-Buddhist racism and majoritarian rule, prospects of constitutional reform and peace, amongst other issues. Collectively, their comments have over 27,000 words.

Also by Suren Raghavan is Imagining the immediate (im)possibilities, read over 4,115 times and generating 25 comments.

Read over 3,871 times and with over 42 comments, The Internment – A Collective Punishment? by Dr. Devanesan Nesiah is a compelling example of how one of Sri Lanka’s best known human rights activists uses Groundviews as a platform to discuss, in detail, issues related to politics, systemic discrimination, racism and the internment of Tamil IDPs in Menik Farm. Joining him in this debate are Off the Cuff and SomewhatDisgusted in particular, who have openly appreciated the timbre of debate on the site with Dr. Nesiah.

IDPs: Detainees and Escapees by Dr. P. Saravanamuttu has generated 63 comments and read over 17,094 times. SomewhatDisgusted and punitham lead the discussion on the nature of Menik Farm and the IDPs interned in it. Hari Narendran, Niranjan, Mawatha Silva, Off the Cuff and others also give competing and compelling perspectives on the humanitarian crisis in Menik Farm and what it portends for the future of peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.

Rajani commemoration: An absence of actuality by Dayan Jayatilleka, read over 5,714 times features 29 comments, including an exchange between Jansee, smoulderingjin, Atheist and Rajani’s husband Dayapala Thiranagama over the LTTE and the nature of the Sri Lankan state today.

Doing the Right Thing: Freedom for Vanni IDPs by Rohini Hensman, read over 2,778 times generates 32 comments features Heshan, doomed to repeat it, Ossie Corea, Off the Cuff and others debating the nature of leadership post-war Sri Lanka has and needs, and the space for independent media.

Sri Lanka is in fact a Gulag Island: A response to Dayan Jayatilaka and the mentality of the phantom limb by renowned human rights activist Basil Fernando, read over 2,405 times has 29 comments. Well known bloggers in Sri Lanka Indi, Java Jones respond, along with Dayan Jayatilleka, aadhavan and smoulderingjin debate the timbre of democracy in post-war Sri Lanka, which Mr. Fernando likens to a Gulag. See

Also by Basil Fernando on similar lines, Defending repression and denying repression are very different has generated 76 comments and read over 3,787 times. Observer and Basil Fernando have over 20 detailed comments between themselves alone arguing over access to information on the situation in the camps and other issues, with undergroundview, Heshan, Agnos and other chipping in with their own incisive perspectives.

Even post-war, discrimination runs deep in Sri Lanka by Marisa de Silva generated 62 comments and over 5,249 readers. Dayan Jayatilleka commends Marisa on her essay, though a lot of others disagree over the nature of anti-Tamil discrimination in Sri Lanka. Some even doubt it exists at all post-war. Ange and Malathy Knight for example write in with two very different perspectives which SomewhatDisgusted, Chaminda Weerawardhana, Sinhala_Voice, Kalana Senaratne, Achala Karunarathna and others go on to debate with their own experiences and perspectives.

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Groundviews is Sri Lanka’s first and award winning citizens journalism website uses a range of literary styles and media – from prose and poetry to satire, photos, podcasts and video to amplify critical perspectives on culture, humanitarianism, media freedom, human rights, peace and democratic governance.

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The internet through mobiles: ODR solutions must follow?

Four years when Melissa and I published our paper on An Asian Perspective on Online Mediation, we were sort of mavericks in the Online Dispute Resolution community for even harbouring the thought that mobiles would dominate the field in less than a decade.

The resistance from the ancien régime was expected – hundreds of thousands of dollars had been invested in existing ODR systems for PCs. The architects, proponents and investors of these systems were not about to embrace new platforms, thin clients and web based services with open arms.

Just four years hence though, the facts are indubitable. As the Economist notes,

Mobile phones have proved to be a boon for the poor world. An extra ten mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country boosts growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points, according to a recent study. Mobile-phone subscriptions in poorer countries accounted for just a quarter of the global stock in 2000, but had risen to three-quarters of the 4 billion total by the start of this year. The next challenge is to expand the use of mobile technology to access the internet. Despite huge strides in producing cheap netbooks that connect via mobile networks, the mobile phone may still provide the cheapest way to access the internet in the developing world.

I’ve already pointed out the direction ODR must go in if it is to leverage this explosive growth in mobiles and other key trends, including as the Economist confirms below the increasing footprint and low cost accessibility of mobile broadband.

Any takers?

Backing the wrong side in Iran

Timothy Garton Ash writes in the Guardian today,

A textbook example of what democracies should not do was provided last year by a joint venture between Siemens and Nokia, called Nokia Siemens Networks. It sold the Iranian regime a sophisticated system with which they can monitor the internet, including emails, internet phone calls and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, much used by Iranian protesters. In today’s politics of people power, that is the equivalent of selling a dictator tanks or poison gas.

So, to be clear: a German company, Siemens, which used slave labour during the Third Reich, sold a Holocaust-denying president the instruments with which he can persecute young Iranians risking their lives for freedom. Think of that every time you buy something made by Siemens.

Writing on the same issue, I noted in June this year,

I suggested to some colleagues this morning that one can look at this issue from the perspective of power and accountability. The power of these DPI systems in Iran pale into insignificance with the capacity of what, for example, the US and its allies can monitor and intercept domestically and globally. But there is, at worst, retroactive judicial oversight in the US even when the Executive runs amok combined with the enabling Freedom of Information legislation. What can and should business do when this accountability and oversight is not present, and yet government’s ask for powerful technologies that can be used to undermine human dignity and human security?

But let’s not kid ourselves – you don’t do any business with a regime like Iran expecting them to give a free reign to rights, dissent and democracy. Is that a reason to not do any business? Not. Is that a reason to be up front to consumers about the business one does? Perhaps. Is that a reason to brush away a moral responsibility for the death of Neda Soltani?

For a different take, and quite a compelling one to boot, read Drac’s response to my post.

Reactions of Sinhala bloggers to Tissainayagam’s sentence

J.S. Tissainayagam

Ajith P. Perera’s Dare to be Different blog has an excellent overview of the Sinhala blogging community’s reactions to the sentencing of journalist J.S. Tissainayagam.

It’s heartening to note the far more nuanced, creative and defiant approach to the sentence in the Sinhala blogosphere as opposed to the fear, self-censorship and outright subservience that frames and undergirds most mainstream Sinhala media coverage.

American Centre hosts discussion on blogs and new media

A presentation and discussion hosted by the American Center titled  Beyond the Blog: How media can use Web 2.0 tools to engage the public will take place on 10th September 2009.

Details here. Should be interesting. Indi Samarajiva, who I interviewed on this blog in 2007, is a key speaker.  Topics covered will be:

• Crises communication
• Collaboration
• Citizen Journalism
• The use of new media such as Web 2.0 and Twitter.

A presentation and discussion hosted by the American Center titled

Beyond the Blog: How media can use Web 2.0 tools to engage the public will take place on 10th September 2009.

Details here. Should be interesting.