Sri Lanka will clamp down on Internet hate speech after violent anti-Muslim riots were said to have been fueled through social media websites, the military said Tuesday. At least four people died and 80 were seriously wounded following the riots in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka two weeks ago.
Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse has asked the law and order ministry to deal with racial and religious hatred being spread using Facebook and Twitter, military spokesman Ruwan Wanigasooriya said. "There are some Facebook pages against Buddhism, but more pages against Islam," Wanigasooriya told Agence France-Presse. "Some try to project every Muslim as a jihadist. It is wrong and it must stop."
Meanwhile, law enforcement authorities have also been asked by Rajapakse, the powerful younger brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, to work out a "practical way" of dealing with online hate speech after the anti-Muslim riots destroyed hundreds of shops and homes in the tourist towns of Alutgama and Berulwala.
Police have arrested eight suspects accused of looting during the riots, along with 55 others who have been linked to the deadly violence.
The hard-line Buddhist Force (BBS) denied instigating attacks against Muslims, claiming that its social media pages had been blocked by service providers last week while their websites had been attacked by hackers. "Our Facebook pages have been taken down," a BBS spokesman told AFP. "We are also facing cyber-attacks and that is not something new. But we will be up and running soon."
Although Sri Lanka does not impose an official censorship, access is routinely blocked to opposition and dissident websites. However, proxy servers based outside the country are still able to access the blocked sites.
Sri Lanka's media as well as rights groups have accused the police of failing to prevent extremist Buddhist mobs from attacking Muslims, who make up 10 percent of the country's 20 million population. Last week, the influential Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, an umbrella group of 48 Muslim organizations, petitioned police chief N. K. Illangakoon conveying fears of more violence against them during the holy month of Ramadan.
