Clamping down on websites in Sri Lanka with Chinese help

ICT for Peacebuilding 1 Minute

I have written extensively since 2005 on how the Rajapakse government has increasingly clamped down on websites. In From pornography to censorship? I flagged fears over the regime’s avowed desire to protect children from online pornography could lead to more blanket censorship of inconvenient content on the web. When the government went on to ban 12 pornographic sites (of the tens of millions still freely accessible), myself and others questioned the legality of the ban.

Just before the Presidential election, a number of independent websites and aggregation portals were blocked from the government ISP. But the latest and most disturbing development in this growing encroachment of online freedom comes with news that the government is seeking the help of Chinese experts to track down Facebook and Twitter users. Ostensibly to stop the spread of false rumours, it is very clear that the Chinese expertise and technology will be used to track and clamp down on any information the government considers inconvenient. As Lakbima News reports,

A special team at the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) is already monitoring the user activities on Facebook, LAKBIMAnEWS learns. “A special team is randomly monitoring activity on social networking sites. The government is worried about false notes on Facebook that criticize the election results giving false allegations and openly doubting the validity and the legitimacy of the result,” a TRC source said. “The order has been given by the government to monitor activities of Facebook and Twitter and monitor how the trend continues.”

Emphasis mine.

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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