Lanka govt under pressure to lift social media

Colombo, March 14: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has said restrictions imposed on social media after the communal riots in the island’s central hills will be lifted within the next few days, as the government faced flak for not lifting the blockage despite improvement in the situation.

The government imposed a state of emergency last week and blocked Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media sites following anti- Muslim violence in Kandy and Ampara districts.

The government restricted the use of social media after police claimed that they were being used to spread hatred against the minority community. Sirisena, addressing Sri Lankan community in Japan on Tuesday, said that the temporary ban on Facebook following the riots will be lifted within the next few days.

He said that even though there is room for any medium for the benefit of the society, there is a need for a certain approach to control the destruction cause to the society by some vicious elements using these mediums, the Colombo Page reported.

“Mobile phones, computers, the Internet and social media were created for the benefit of the human kind and utilising these technologies we can get the knowledge of a world, but unfortunately some section of the society in Sri Lanka use these resources to