Sri Lanka to ring death knell for online dissenting views on media and Facebook
Vibrant social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp under threat
Two most obnoxious legal bills were published in the government gazette this week. One, newly called ‘AntiTerrorism’ bill could potentially make terrorists out of us all if we express dissenting views in public on government policy.
The other, euphemistically titled ‘Online Safety’ bill could toll the death knell for the free and vibrant social media, extant today in Sri Lanka, along with a host of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or rebranded X accounts which millions of Lankans daily use to air their pleasurable moments to friends or to give vent to their frustrations when they disagree with unseemly government conduct or challenges another’s views that’s contrary to his own.
If the Sri Lankan Government’s atrocious human rights record was not already tarred enough, then, this week it impudently descended to the pit to add another layer of indelible tar to permanently leave it defaced beyond redemption’s pale.
The public proclamation of two draconian bills by the government gazette which do not merely trample but stamp its spiked jackboots on the right to free speech is but a thundering slap on both cheeks of the UNHRC which, only two weeks ago, had demanded of the Lankan Government to get its act together and strive to improve its track record on human rights.
It’s a clear signal that henceforth it will not be dictated to by United Nation’s Human Rights Council fiats on how not to violate the fundamental rights of its own citizens but will, instead, be governed solely by the now outdated eighties’ rigid doctrine: ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state’, where Governments for its own preservation and perpetuation of political power could suppress the people with impunity—or even massacre its citizens—as Pol Pot did to his Cambodian people or Idi Amin to his Ugandans.
The rest of the world’s States and men could only watch and wait in apathetic silence, helpless to prevent the terrible fate that befell its fellow citizens belonging to mankind.
This doctrine—a throwback to a colonial past—was but a licence granted to competing European States to occupy a foreign land by force, and massacre its aboriginals at will, as done to those of Canada, to Native Americans, to the aborigines of Australia, to the black natives in the continent of mineral-rich Africa by Belgium’s King Leopard to plunder the spoils of conquest which left 10 million dead in Congo; to the indigenous of South America by Spanish conquistadors; and even to those in the crowning jewel in Britain’s colonial empire—is, in this more enlightened age, dead and discarded.
Those States that still seek to subscribe to this condemned despised old relic of antiquity, are doomed to be condemned as well and run the risk of exile as pariahs of the international community.
These were in the dark days of old when fundamental freedoms, we so casually take for granted now, were still a twinkle in downtrodden men’s and women’s eyes. It sparkled, shaped and formed at the turn of this century, assuming animated legal force with the establishment, with universal consensus, of the UN Human Rights Council in two thousand and six.
It’ll be a vain and futile exercise at present to consider in great depth these two controversial bills because they may have been ostensibly laid out to test the water of opinion and the extent to which the Government can go. If the heat is too much and the length too extreme then it will, no doubt, be withdrawn; and, as has happened so oft in the past—as was the case of the previous anti-terror bill in March—be reintroduced in climes more conducive with a cosmetic touch to conceal its blemishes and warts, with its offending wrinkles ironed out on old visage.
Suffice it to say that with the Anti-Terrorism Bill, the Government has been prepared to go to ludicrous lengths to make terrorists out of us all. For instance, the theft of private property is classified as an act of terrorism under this bill in section 3.
Thus, a poor housemaid who steals a rich woman’s jewelled ring, may be held as a terrorist suspect, if the allegation is also made that she did so with the intention of donating the proceeds to the Catholic Church to make an appeal for justice to Easter Sunday blast victims, which, if done by the Church, is in itself a terrorist offence under this bill in section 3(1) (b) which states:
‘Wrongfully or unlawfully compelling the Government of Sri Lanka, or any other Government, or an international organisation, to do or to abstain from doing any act’.
The Lawyers’ Collective condemned the latest version of the Anti-Terrorism Bill and slammed the government for its failure to respond to the serious and fundamental concerns raised about the Anti-Terrorism Bill. The Lawyers’ Collective also called for the immediate withdrawal of this and the Online Safety Bill and demanded the ‘adoption of a transparent process of consultative lawmaking and the proposal of executive and legal measures that are proportionate and responsive to the needs of the people’.
As far as the Online Safety Bill is concerned, it seems a sinister attempt to steal in provisions of the repealed, though once feared, law of Criminal Defamation. For this purpose, a Commission was appointed by the President. It will empower them to monitor internet communications by all Sri Lankan citizens irrespective of where they presently reside. These shady snoopers will have power to eavesdrop on chatter on the web.
As per Section 5 of the bill: ‘The Commission shall consist of five members appointed by the President having qualifications and experience in one or more of the fields of information technology, law, governance, social services, journalism, science and technology or management’.
That means computer whiz kids, lawyers, politicians, social workers, scientists, business leaders or mercantile executives only need to apply. Strangely doctors are ruled out. Since it demands experience and qualifications, will it be a disqualification for an experienced journalist or Good Samaritan social worker or a rags to riches business magnate or successful politician, each of whom has a wealth of experience but who lacks even an O’ level qualification?
These President appointed five Commissioners will be akin to the collective host of Vestal Virgins at the Temple of Vesta in ancient Rome or similar to Apollo’s high priestess Pythia, who served as Oracle of Delphi found on Mount Parnassus’ western slopes in ancient Greece.
They will divinely be empowered by a special Presidential fiat to tap into secret private chatter on secure internet lines, to read all Facebook messages, see all Instagram, WhatsApp pics and videos, peruse all Twitter comments to protect and safeguard national security from all internal threats, as Vestal Virgins or high priestess Pythia were once divinely blessed and thus commanded by their Roman or Greek Gods to peep into their oracles and to forewarn the State of any threat to national security posed by impending war.
The five Commissioners also blessed with the omniscient eye to divine the truth and, in the manner of crop farmers separating the chaff from the wheat, can distinguish the truth from falsity. When they discern the lie, they are empowered to sue the offender for communicating the false statement that may pose a threat to national security and other incidental interests. All such offences carry a jail sentence and a fine.
And neither will newspapers be spared of this sinister assault. Their online editions will come within the purview of these five Commissioners.
That will suffice for now on ‘Online Safety’ Bill which vests upon its five Commissioners a vast array of extraordinary powers that may well infringe upon a citizen’s right to free speech. One question though remains unanswered throughout the entire proposed enactment: What will be the case if, with the benefit of hindsight, the false statement turns out to be true, when the case has been concluded and the person jailed? Will the Commissioners still claim divine infallibility in their defence?
These two repugnant and abhorrent bills must be resisted at all costs. Should ever these bills be enshrined in law, they shall forever be insults incarnate to mock and demean the natural intelligence and selfesteem of all 22 million Sri Lankan citizens wherever domiciled.
If the price of a people’s liberty is to remain in constant vigilance, now is the time not only to keep vigil but to rise and act through peaceful legal means available, demonstrate that when freedom of expression—the bedrock upon which all the other freedoms rest—is under insidious attack, it is not free speech but the neck of an insolent Government that’s on the chopping block.
Pontius Pilate asked, ‘What is Truth?’, then washed his hand and crucified Jesus. Is this caretaker Government, which has now delegated Pilate’s question ‘What is Truth?’ to five Commissioners, prepared to wash its hands and nail free speech to the symbolic cross?