Facebook ban and VPN way to beat it
This week’s tragedy did not only see the burning of Muslim establishments and attacks on mosques by extremists elements. It also saw the Government going pell-mell in trampling on people’s freedoms and muffling the sound of the people’s voice.
The reintroduction of emergency law in the country: Without which, it now seems, this nation -- though it celebrates freedom from British rule on a grand scale each year, even as it did last month to fly the flag high to celebrate the seventieth year of its independence -- cannot do without. Emergency law may have been necessary. No doubt about that.
But the fact remains that without established traditions ingrained in the nation’s collective conscience to guide the masses on democracy’s chartered course, with only lip service paid clad in white to the five precepts and, that too, though made eight or ten, mainly confined to when the moon waxes full every month and the nation turns pious; without example set from the peaks of power but only preaching without practice and action without purpose are made from those dizzy heights, no wonder emergency rule, which wobbles between democracy and dictatorship, becomes the first resort of this godforsaken nation to maintain law and order and not its last recourse.
This week’s violence also empowered the government to black out social media and claim justification on the basis that loose talk on the world’s grapevine can lead to loss of lives. In the present context, also true. But in the process of banning Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace, WhatsApp, Viber and what not that served as outlets for the masses to speak their mind and give vent to their spleen it also set a dangerous precedent for future governments to follow. Especially at election time. The masses voice now can be stilled by future regimes, not so benign as this present one is, by reference to the precedent set and do so in the name of national security,
Not that any government can control or put a stop to technological advancement. Those who wish to still continue chats on the social web, those who still wish to post their pictures and their comments on their face books and even the local Trumps who wish to trumpet their tweets on Twitter can still do so. Simply by downloading the VPN (Virtual Private Network) and beating the government bans. If it’s only to show that the public’s voice can no longer be muffled, stifled or hushed on any pretext. That information technology has enabled the voice of the masses to become the master’s voice.