SOCIAL MEDIA HATE SPEECH SPIKES UP!

Any Sri Lankan social media user would have noted the rise in post election hate speech since the results of the Presidential Election was announced. The post election hate speech mainly revolved on two groups of voters; the voters of the Negombo electorate and the voters in the electorates of the North and the East. In these electorates, the majority voted in favour of the New Democratic Front (NDF) candidate, Sajith Premadasa.

Since many social media users erroneously believe that Katuwapitiya is a part of the Negombo electorate, the residents of Katuwapitiya became the latest target for the online social media hate posts. Due to St.

Sebastian’s Church, Katuwapitya being one of the places that the Easter Sunday carnage took place at, many expected the residents of Negombo would vote in favour of Presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa. When the results showed that Negombo polled 53.03% in favour of Sajith Premadasa and 38.23% in favour of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, social media users were quick to spread hatred in terms of posts and comments. Some of the posts and comments that were seen on social media had messages such as “The residents of Negombo should be bombed again”, “Hereafter even if missiles hit Negombo, we won’t sympathize with them”, “Shame on you Negombo. Voted for the bombers who killed your people”, “Good that the bombers bombed Negombo, if not the ones who died also would have voted for Sajith”. These messages were not only degrading the people of Negombo, but were also an insult to those who had been killed.

Premadasa won by a comfortable margin over Rajapaksa in the North and the East. This caused an outrage on social media as many started comparing the electoral map to the LTTE Eelam map. These hate mongers went as far as to say that those voters were terrorists. Some users even requested President Rajapaksa to not carry out any development or welfare projects in those areas. Some posts stated that the military should be sent back to those areas to torture the residents. Some posts endorsed ethnic cleansing, severe racism and incited hate and violence.