Sri Lankan government prepares new Internet restrictions

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Sri Lankan government prepares new Internet restrictions
By Sarath Kumara
15 February 2010

In a further violation of basic democratic rights, Sri Lankan
authorities are preparing new measures to censor Internet sites
critical of the government. Reports of the plan emerged on several web
sites last night, amid a widening crackdown on the political
opposition, including the arrest last Monday of opposition
presidential candidate, General Sarath Fonseka.

More details were revealed in the Colombo-based Sunday Times
yesterday. Under regulations to be drafted by the Telecommunication
Authority (TRC), it will be compulsory for all news web sites to
register with the authority to obtain Internet Protocol (IP)
addresses. The National Express Internet Service Advisory Service,
which handles IP addresses, will also be involved in implementing the
rules, a TRC official told the newspaper. Restrictions will also be
imposed on the Google search engine.

Information department director Anusha Palpita, who was appointed last
week as TRC chairman, denied the reports, saying he had not received
instructions from President Mahinda Rajapakse. However, Rajapakse, who
already holds the ministerial posts of defence and finance, personally
took over the media ministry last week in order to supervise tighter
control of the media, including the Internet and other electronic
communications.

The Sunday Times also reported that the Sri Lankan government had
turned to China for assistance in implementing Internet censorship.
“Experts from China—which is embroiled in a battle with global search
giant Google over allegations of web censorship—will help Sri Lanka to
block ‘offensive web sites’,” the newspaper explained. “IT experts of
China’s Military Intelligence Division will be here within next two
weeks to map out the modalities required for this purpose.”

The involvement of China is not accidental. In the face of mounting
social unrest and widespread resistance to its far-reaching Internet
censorship, Beijing is demanding that all personal computers sold in
China be installed with government Internet filtering software. A
growing number of Chinese police departments are replacing old search
engine-based methods with more advanced data-mining applications to
analyse the huge amount of information on the Internet. (See: “China
forced to delay Internet censorship measure”)

The Sri Lankan government is leaning increasingly on China, which
helped it financially, politically and by supplying arms during the
final four years of war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was defeated last May. In return, China has
been granted investment opportunities, including the construction of a
major port at Hambantota in Sri Lanka’s south. In response to mounting
tensions with the US, China is seeking strategic alliances with
governments on all continents, and Sri Lanka is among them.

Palpita rejected reports that Chinese engineers would work on
electronic surveillance methods to monitor the contents of Internet
articles and messages. He asserted the need for new regulations,
however. “We do not have such regulations yet,” he stated. “But I
think there should be a proper system of monitoring and regulating
content.” Palpita said contents—whether political, cultural, religious
or pornographic—should be checked if they “create problems in society”.

Palpita also denied that the TRC had tracked down people who wrote
Facebook and Twitter messages criticising the government. However, the
police have already detained several opposition supporters for
allegedly sending phone text messages accusing the government of
election fraud. Media Centre for National Security director Lakshman
Hulugalle told the Times: “A few people are under arrest and action
will follow after investigations are completed”. He refused to divulge
the nature of the charges or how many people had been detained.

In the name of safeguarding “religious and cultural values” and “the
national interest,” arbitrary political control is to be established
over what people can see and hear. Mass media and information ministry
advisor Charitha Herath said: “Our national interest has to be
protected and therefore it is important to have a debate on the
subject of content regulation.”

These preparations amount to a new stage in the government’s assault
on freedom of expression, and the right to know the views of others.
The government is particularly concerned about the electronic media,
because Sri Lanka now has about 13 million mobile phone users and one
million Internet users, according to telecommunications industry
estimates.

Over the last four years, the Rajapakse government deepened the
assault on the media. It blocked the pro-LTTE TamilNet and
TamilCanadian web sites, and is still continuing the ban. During the
recent presidential election campaign, the authorities blocked the web
sites lankaenews and nidahasa.

Between 2006 and 2009, at least 14 media workers, including
journalists, were killed in Sri Lanka. Many more were harassed,
threatened, beaten or arrested, and about a dozen fled the country,
fearing for their lives. In each case, the evidence pointed to the
work of pro-government death squads operating in collusion with the
military. None of the assailants has been arrested or prosecuted.

A year ago, the MTV/Sirasa broadcasting network was ransacked by an
armed gang and, in a separate incident, Lasantha Wickrematunge, the
editor of the weekly Sunday Leader, was murdered in broad daylight in
a Colombo suburb near a military high security zone.

Last September, a Colombo court sentenced Tamil journalist J.S.
Tissanayagam to an unprecedented 20 years of hard labour under the
Prevention of Terrorism Act and emergency regulations. He was charged
over two articles he wrote in the North Eastern Monthly magazine in
2006 and 2007 criticising the government’s renewed war against the
LTTE and its impact on Tamil civilians.

The January 26 presidential election was accompanied by further media
disappearances and arrests. Prageeth Eknaligoda, a journalist working
for lankaenews, has been missing since January 24. A few days after
the election, Chandana Sirimalwatte, the editor of Lanka, a newspaper
supporting the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), was
arrested and has been detained since then.

The arrest of opposition candidate Fonseka is part of a broader
dragnet that has involved the detention of retired military personnel
and others supportive of the general. The latest moves to impose
Internet censorship are further steps toward establishing a police
state. These measures are likely to be used to stifle opposition in
the run-up to the parliamentary general election announced last week
for April 8.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/slmd-f15.shtml

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