How I saw Stephen Hawking's death as a disabled person

Stephen Hawking's work led many to become interested in astrophysics

By Ellis Palmer-16 March 2018

Stephen Hawking was a renowned scientist famed for his work on black holes and relativity.

He published several popular science books such as A Brief History of Time.

Prof Hawking was also a wheelchair user who lived with motor neurone disease from the age of 21.
Yes, he was an award-winning scientist, but a lot of the coverage after Prof Hawking's death has created a narrative of an "inspirational" figure who was "crippled" by his condition and "confined to a wheelchair".

As a disabled person, I've found this discourse troubling and somewhat regressive.

I'm tired of being labelled an 'inspiration'

Stephen Hawking's death has reminded me why I'm tired, as a disabled person and a wheelchair user, of being labelled an inspiration just for living my everyday life.

Prof Hawking was an extraordinary scientist and an incredibly intelligent human being.

However, many disabled people, myself included, would take issue with calling him an "inspiration" as this term is often used in popular society to belittle disabled people's experiences.

I am fine with my friends and family members calling me "inspirational". However, I get labelled it by random strangers, who hardly know me and just see the wheelchair and my condition (cerebral palsy, which means I use a wheelchair), not the person.

People with disabilities are often framed as either inspirational (say, a Paralympic athlete) or scroungers (people to be cared for or, worse, demonised) by the media and on television screens.

Our everyday experiences are neither heroic nor those of scroungers: it's just life as we know it.

• Visionary physicist Stephen Hawking dies
• Obituary: Stephen Hawking

More role models, please

Kids in the playground of my Merseyside primary school would compare me, probably the only young wheelchair user they had encountered, with the "genius" that was Stephen Hawking.

This was not an entirely fair comparison, I must say.

To me what this showed, even from a young age, was that there was a lack of "people like me", disabled people in the public spotlight, people I could aspire to be like.

I can think of four or five disabled people who were in the public spotlight when I was growing up early part of the last decade: David Blunkett, the former home secretary who is blind, Stephen Hawking, and two Paralympic athletes, Tanni Grey-Thompson and Ade Adepitan.

Stephen Hawking lived with motor neurone disease from the age of 21.

Prof Hawking showed that, despite public perceptions of what a disabled person can do, people with disabilities can achieve amazing things.

Even today, there are still too few disabled people out there in the public eye on a daily basis who are relatable for ordinary disabled people growing up.

If you're a sporty individual, there are Paralympic and disability sport stars. However disability representation on screen in the media and in society as a whole is low, despite the fact that disabled people make up almost one in five of the population, according to the UK government's Family Resources Survey.

All too often, they are categorised using able-bodied people's terminology as "inspiring" or "confined to a wheelchair" by illness or otherwise - rather than language based on their own experiences.

• Listen to the latest episode of the BBC's Disability podcast, Ouch!

Watch your words (and your memes)

An Australian artist, Mitchell Toy, posted an image of Stephen Hawking leaving his wheelchair, which some say is offensive

For me, the most troubling moment in the reaction to Prof Hawking's death was when an image of him standing out of his wheelchair went viral on social media.

What this image suggested was a rather damaging trope: the disabled person should always seek to not use a wheelchair, rather than the impairment being something positive to reflect and work with.

Society still seeks to create an image of a disabled person's life as pitiable or a burden on society. This can be incredibly damaging to a disabled person's mental health and their perception of themselves.

Class matters

Prof Hawking was a fellow at Cambridge's Gonville and Caius College for 52 years

One cannot ignore the role of class, race and gender privileges when it comes to disability as these are often intertwined.

Prof Hawking was first diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and given a very short time to live.

However, prior to that, his experience had been one of an able-bodied upper middle-class male who studied at Oxford.

As my colleague Alex Taylor wrote for the New Statesman in 2014, Prof Hawking's social class and that he became disabled at 21 meant that he was afforded opportunities that would not have been given to a disabled person in his era who was born with their condition.

Often, the biggest barrier to a disabled person's advancement in society can be low expectations in the education system.

I grew up on Merseyside in northern England and went to a mainstream primary school and a comprehensive secondary school on a former council estate. I was sometimes advised to take "easier" subjects on account of my disability.

Fortunately, I persisted: I studied the subjects I wanted to. I went on to university and to get my dream job here at the BBC.

Media captionDream unlocked: I recently reported for the BBC on Tube access in London

Only 44,250 of over 400,000 students declared a disability when starting their degree courses in 2015-16, the Higher Education Funding Council reported.

When you consider that there are 13.3 million disabled people in the UK, that's a very low number.
Social class is still a significant contributor to determining the life chances of disabled people, something that Prof Hawking's death has brought home for me.

REPORT: TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM: SRI LANKA AS THE CROSS ROADS

Introduction. 

15/03/2018

With less than two years to the next Presidential election, Sri Lanka is facing one of the most serious political crisis in recent times. In the Local Government elections in February 2018, the party of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa secured the majority of votes in many constituencies, pointing towards a possible political shift. Sri Lanka is now at the crossroads, with looming uncertainty.

The expectations of reconciliation, protection of human rights and accountability in Sri Lanka were based on bi-partisan politics in the South, the willingness of the Tamil polity to find a negotiated political solution and a strong civil society. The post-2015 developments paved the way for establishing checks and balances in form of Independent Commissions and provided a democratic space for the people. Today, however, all these developments and factors that propelled change have come under threat due to the political instability, following the Local Government elections.

On one hand, the much defeated corrupt and suppressive forces led by Rajapaksa threaten to capture power on the basis of Sinhala nationalism. On the other hand, the ruling coalition which came to power on the promise of democratisation, justice, and accountability is being disintegrated.
Read the full report as a PDF:Sri Lanka Briefing Note No 13 March 2018

Political climate

Differences between the two coalition partners of the Government have become issues with far reaching consequences. Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) headed by President Sirisena and United National Party (UNP) headed by Prime Minister Wickremasinghe have taken up contradictory positions on major political, economic and cultural issues, including transitional justice.

President Rajapaksa now commands the support of 52 out of the 98 Members of the Parliament. He also commands absolute majority of local government bodies. Rajapaksa remains the most popular political leader among the Sinhala Buddhist community and has been mobilising his followers regularly. Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism provides the foundation for his politics.

The ruling coalition did not campaign jointly for an inclusive Sri Lanka. President Sirisena tried to employ Rajapaksa’s Sinhala-nationalist and war-triumphalist populist slogans to widen his own base. This strategy backfired as it strengthened Rajapaksa ideology in the country.

A divided country

The recent anti- Muslim violence that sent shock waves throughout the country is an indication of the increasingly widening ethnic polarization. In past months three minor incidents that should have been brought under control quickly transformed into anti-Muslim violence spreading like wild fires. These xenophobic attacks reached its climax in the first week of March in the district of Kandy. Number of Muslim mosques and hundreds of houses and business places of the innocent Muslims were set on fire by the Sinhala Buddhist extremists while the government and police had become mere onlookers.
At the same time the civil society too remains fragmented on ethnic, political, and social lines. Although certain civil society actors have the power to persuade political authorities collectively, they lack in mobilisation power.

Meanwhile in the North as well as the South, nationalist forces have gained strength mainly due to the Government’s inability deliver on its promises of political, social, and economic justice.

In this context, Government of Sri Lanka may not have political will and people’s mandate to implement the promises it made on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka.

The challenges before the democratic forces in Sri Lanka today are, therefore, immense and decisive. International Community too needs to have a fresh look at the developing situation and focus the collective effort on strengthening protection of human rights, furthering reconciliation and ensuring accountability in Sri Lanka.

Judges Must Be Accountable 

By Nihal Jayawickrama –MARCH 15, 2018

Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama

The edited text of a presentation made at the Conference of Chief Justices and Presidents of Supreme Courts and Constitutional Courts of Africa convened by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, in Cairo last week.  Although two Sri Lankans were intimately involved in the processes that led to the formulation of the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct, the Sri Lanka Judiciary remains one of the few judiciaries in the world that have failed to incorporate these Principles in a code of judicial conduct of its own.

From Independence to Accountability –

THE BANGALORE PRINCIPLES OF JUDICIAL CONDUCT

Judicial Independence

In 1985, the United Nations agreed upon certain basic principles that underpin judicial independence and called upon governments to implement them. They are contained in the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary. Judicial independence is the right enjoyed by people when they invoke the jurisdiction of the courts seeking and expecting justice.  It is not a privilege accorded to the judiciary. It refers to the state of mind of the judge. It refers also to the institutional arrangements that enable the judge to enjoy that state of mind. These include constitutional guarantees of security of tenure and of remuneration, removal from office only for misbehaviour or infirmity of body or mind, and protection against vexatious litigation instituted by dissatisfied parties. Within that constitutional framework, and buttressed by the judicial oath, it was assumed that a person appointed to judicial office will acquire that state of mind that would enable him or her to decide any matter honestly and impartially on the basis of the law and the evidence, without external pressure or influence, and without fear of interference from anyone, including other judges.

Twenty-one years later, in 2006, the United Nations invited governments to encourage their judiciaries to implement the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct. It described the Bangalore Principles as being “a further development” of, and as being “complementary” to, the 1985 Principles relating to judicial independence. Why did it become necessary to look beyond judicial independence? Why did the focus move from securing judicial independence to ensuring the ethical conduct of members of the judiciary; from judicial independence to judicial accountability. I would venture to suggest five reasons.

First:  The independence of the judiciary was traditionally believed to be endangered by state authorities and state functionaries. With the steady growth of the corporate sector, the independence of the judiciary has to be secured from business and corporate interests too. In the contemporary world, judicial independence implies not only that the judiciary should be free from governmental and political pressure, but also that judges should not succumb to the enormous power, wealth and resources of the corporate sector.

Second:  In the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that rejected their authoritarian regimes in the final decade of the twentieth century, the judiciary had been a component of the machinery of the State. The judges were bureaucrats wedded to the authoritarian State. Now, almost overnight, they were required to emancipate themselves. They were required to demonstrate a strong attachment to democracy and human rights. They were required to become major players in fashioning the social, moral and political fabric of their emerging democracies. They needed to adopt values that matched these public expectations. They needed self-regulatory standards that recognized the new responsibilities which they had accepted.

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The spectre of Gotabaya

 Friday, 16 March 2018

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right

to tell people what they

 do not want to hear – George Orwell
Memory’s struggle against forgetting

A spectre is haunting our land. It is the spectre of a Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency in 2020. We have forgotten how we feared Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s hand on the levers of power before 8 January 2015.  I am too old to care.

These words are written not in fear but in despair. As novelist philosopher Milan Kundera said in lyrical elegance, our struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Just last morning Dinesh Gunewardene was brushing off the Rathupaswala shooting as just another happenstance on a TV program. That was a clever line for the son of the father of Marxism who denuded the Sinharaja rainforest for a plywood factory in his backyard. We all carry heavy baggage.

A conniving President

With a conniving President Sirisena quietly egging on, there is little or nothing to halt Gotabaya’s ideology of Sinhala Buddhist exceptionalism gnawing into the primitive minds of a majority of our majority tribe.

It is claimed that the tycoon brother Dudley Sirisena is the facilitator of this Faustian compact. That makes sense. Billionaire oligarchs flourish with all powerful leaders. Janadhipathi Thatha is assured of a quiet retirement retreat in the obscurity that awaits a shameless, fraudulent prophet.

A President’s nincompoopery

Trapped in myth and legend, insisted upon as our impeccable heritage by a Sinhala Buddhist clerical mafia, we are deprived of a supportive culture either capable or equipped to embrace human progress in this day and age.

Thanks to the nincompoopery of President Sirisena, the unthinkable now seems inevitable.

That is, unless, this Parliament succeeds in abolishing the executive presidency.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa will surely end up the supreme law giver of this blessed island. And worse, it will be in the guise of redeemer of the Sinhala Buddhist tribe.

We must get our facts straight. While many were repelled by the debauchery of his governance, Mahinda was and still is the one dominant leader in our midst. The absence of any credible competitors makes him much taller than he really is. The circus of the last three years demonstrates the point. Sirisena parading on his SLFP leader stilts to come up to Mahinda’s chin!

The historic coalition that ousted the Mahinda regime in 2015 was entirely energised by a collective fear of the deep state that functioned under his brother – the then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Gotabaya – An anatomy

The record shows Gotabaya Rajapaksa to be less of a soldier and more of a manipulator. He left active service at the height of the war, migrated, renounced his nationality and never set foot on the land of his birth until the brother contested the presidency.

Gotabaya is Cleonymus – the Athenian general who dropped his shield in battle and fled. But then, he made up for his abandonment by carefully constructing a persona of achiever, go getter and warrior hero capping his rise with a sycophant profiler obligingly producing a tome titled ‘Gota’s War’.

He jailed the soldier who won the war and claimed title to the victory with the Sangha notarising the deeds. Today he is well positioned to climb the greasy poll of power. He will do it with ease and relish. An obliging Buddhist Sangha fraternity will wipe off the grease with their saffron wraps and tilt the pole to an easy, accessible angle.

Giving the devil his due 

That said, it must be recognised that as Defence Secretary he conceptualised the campaign that made soldiering for the legitimate state a righteous and virtuous calling.

Post-war he made it a political project. The pride in the uniform and remembrance of the fallen were brilliantly used to capture the imagination of the nation.

That it produced a Sinhala Buddhist constituency for Gotabaya is an accidental by product. Gotabaya cannot be blamed for that. However, our common sense directs us to be alert to the danger. His gauleiters – General Kamal Gunaratne and Admiral Sarath Weerasekera – have given us enough reason to be wary of a Gotabaya presidency.

The image of the heroic soldier was created at considerable moral cost. It totally rejected even the minutest empathy for the minorities whose genuine grievances were construed as an existential threat to the Sinhala people. Any empathy with the minorities – the Tamil people – was identified with the coward, the malingerer and the deserter. It was a deliberate strategy. The man’s brilliance lies in his capacity to reinvent truth according to his personal agenda.

Why Gotabaya

should be thwarted

A Gotabaya presidency promises a dreadful dystopia. It will bifurcate the Sinhala majority in to the heroic and the anti-heroic. The minorities, needless to say would be the enemy.

His ascendancy to power must be thwarted.  Why? Because he is a vicious, vindictive, racist, control freak.

It is time to take stock of our predicament. We are a thinly disguised quasi theocracy. We are covered in a strange mosaic that combines the dark green battle fatigue of the patriotic soldier and the saffron robe of the patriotic priest.

Gotabaya has a finely tuned alliance with the Sinhala Buddhist Sangha who are either genuine Sinhala nationalists or pure and simple political operatives clad in robes.

Unravelling the Sangha

In Sri Lanka the saffron robe is not a refuge from worldly affairs. On the contrary, it is but an entrée to social advancement.

Once ordained they develop peculiar hobbies such as taming baby elephants, feeding them with tamarind pods. Some die in the process!

These clerics are elites and their temples are manorial enclaves of great prestige. They radiate fearsome shadowy power over believers and followers.

They have their own definitions and values of social justice and human rights. (If Eknaligoda had LTTE links or Lasantha had links with foreign NGOs they forfeit their human rights.)

They are manipulative maestros in defining proper behaviour for themselves and their flock. They claim an inherent and natural prestige. They exert an unimaginable influence over a people held hostage to tradition and social norms. They are a pivotal breed of political players in Gotabaya’s great game.

The autocrat seduces them with patronage. They return the favour by legitimising the autocracy. The intensity of their attachment to the teachings of the Buddha is propionate to the engine capacity of their limousines.

This writer is a practicing Buddhist now in his 75th year. My children are under strict instructions to avoid any saffron mumbo jumbo when I board the ferry. No need for dead weight!

The dream candidate

Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the dream candidate of this cold and calculating class of the Sinhala Buddhist Sangha. Their Nirvana is perfected through centuries of politicking behind curtains since the time of our Kandyan kings.

Prince Siddhartha renounced once when he left his palace. Our soldier statesman will do better. He has once renounced his Sri Lankan citizenship. Now he has promised to renounce his US citizenship. That is a double whammy in the business of renunciation. It qualifies as an ‘avant-garde’ redemption!

The abyss that awaits

The last three years have demonstrated the futility of converting a patrimonial state in to a functional democracy. In the patrimonial state, the sources of power – status and wealth – are concentrated in the state. The political class and the priestly class are in a symbiotic compact sharing the spoils.

Gotabaya has the capacity, the will and the skill to construct the perfect garrison state. In his ‘Brave New World,’ Aldous Huxley described the kind of state that Gotabaya will preside over. It will be an efficient totalitarian state. It will be one ‘in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude’.

Sri Lanka HRC asks TRC to strike a balance between people's rights and maintenance of public order

Thu, Mar 15, 2018, 11:53 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

Mar 15, Colombo: The Human Rights Council of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) welcoming the steps taken by the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) to lift restrictions on social media requested the TRC to in future strike a balance between people's right to information and maintenance of public order to ensure constitutional rights of all people.

In a letter addressed to the Chairman of the TRC, Secretary to the President Austin Fernando, the Chairperson of the HRCSL, Dr. Deepika Udagama said HRCSL recognizes the critical necessity to protect freedom of expression and the right to information as guaranteed by the Constitution of Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka's international human rights obligations.

"ln doing so, we recognize the need to strike the necessary balance between those rights and maintenance of public order and the protection of the rights of all," Dr. Udagama said in her letter.
The President today instructed the TRC to immediately lift the ban restricting access to social media platforms. The ban was imposed following racial and religious attacks on Muslims last week in Kandy, which according to the authorities were fueled by the hate speech in social media.

HRCSL said it has received several complaints from the public regarding the continuing restrictions on social media even after the violence in the Kandy District has been brought under control.

"While we are encouraged by media reports that TRC has taken steps to Iift the restriction on social media as quickly as possible, we also wish to point out that any future policy regarding the regulation of social media to deal with hate speech must strike that necessary balance so that freedom of expression and the right to information are restricted only within the legal limits permitted by the Constitution and Sri Lanka's international human rights obligations in the larger public interest," HRCSL Chairperson said.

"Further, we wish to once again reiterate the urgent need to take legal action against those who are using social media to propagate communal hatred and incite sectarian violence under applicable laws, in particular under the ICCPR Act No. 56 of 2007," she added.

Families of the disappeared in Kilinochchi meet Swiss officials

14Mar 2018

Families of the disappeared in Kilinochchi met with officials from the Swiss embassy on Tuesday, on their 387th day of protest. 

Holding photographs of their missing loved ones, families expressed their frustration at the government's failure to provide answers despite over one year of protests. 

Related Articles: 

08 March 2018 : Mullaitivu families of disappeared mark one year of protest

08 March 2018 : Mothers mark year of disappearance protests at UNHRC

04 March 2018 : Cannot trick us with the OMP - families of disappeared mark 1 year of protest in Trincomalee

01 March 2018 : Families of disappeared report increased surveillance and intimidation by Sri Lankan intelligence

Muslims & The Country Suffered Due To Racist Politics

By Latheef Farook –MARCH 14, 2018

Latheef Farook

Has the collapsing Maithri-Ranil government joined the anti-Muslim United States, Israeli and Indian war mongers axis to implement their evil designs on innocent Muslims in the island?

This is the question arises in view of the refusal of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to take timely  precautionary measures  to protect  Muslims from the senseless attacks and the damage to the country  by racist elements.

These well planned and executed carnage on the Muslims have all the hallmarks of  Rastriya Seva Sangh (RSS) attacks in India since partition in 1947.

Time and again RSS gangs unleash violence on Indian Muslims especially in the north. They desecrate mosques, burn Holy Quran, residential, commercial and industrial units and turn Muslims into penniless. This has been common occurrences and were incidents when Muslim women were stripped naked, paraded in streets and video filmed.

Culprits were rarely brought to book even under congress governments. 

This has been happening to Sri Lankan Muslims ever since violent attacks were unleashed under the defeated President Mahinda Rajapaksa. 

Sick of this carnage more than 95 percent of   Muslims voted for President Maithripala Sirisena who pledged to bring to book all criminals and those who caused communal disharmony.

However Muslim hopes were dashed as Maithri-Ranil government dismissed their interests and sentiments from the very inception. For example President Sirisena visited Holocaust Museum during his visit to Germany dismissing the sentiments of Muslims. This was followed by the official invitation to British war criminal Tony Blair who, together with US war criminal George Bush, invaded Iraq and destroyed that country besides killing five percent of the Iraqi population.

President Sirisena’s government also refused to condemn the recent genocide of Rohingya Muslims. Meanwhile there began sporadic attacks on Muslims and the perpetrators were not brought to justice.     

The result was growing frustration among Muslims.

It is common knowledge that Galagoda Atte Gnanasara Thero, General Secretary of Bodu Bala Sena, a violent anti-Muslim outfit, flourished under Rajapaksa government. He is a man of violence and openly displays his hatred towards Muslims .There are numerous police cases against him. Yet he was seen meeting President Sirisena who promised the nation to bring such people to books.  This was an insult to justice and Muslims.

As time went on the number of attacks on Muslim continue to increase while the government continued to turned blind eye.

Muslims took up the matter with President Sirisena, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and even the IGP. A delegation comprising Professor Sarath Jayasuriya, Gamini Viyangoda and Janarangana together with National Shoora Council members met President Sirisena last year and urged him to stop attacks on Muslims.

His response was “this is Mahinda Rajapaksa’s conspiracy to topple the government” and   never uttered a word about enforcing law and order and punish the culprits.   

This attitude continued until the attacks on Muslims in Gintota, Ampara and areas in and around Digana, Teledeniya, Pallekelle, Akurana, Ambatenne and other places causing billions of rupees worth of destruction depriving  livelihood of thousands of families who were forced to live in fear and misery.

On the other hand Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, known for his pro-western mindset, too adopted a lukewarm policy. As prime ministers he supported former US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in their invasion of Iraq. When Muslim parliamentarians tried to condemn he told them to leave the government and do so.

Days after the attacks on Ampara Prime Minister Wickremesinghe left to Singapore to attend a seminar while days after the attack on Digana President Sirisena left to India and Japan while curfew was still in force.

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Lasantha murder probe: CID to use SF’s, Mervyn’s statements

2018-03-15

The CID today informed Court that it has decided to use statements recorded in 2016 from Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka and former Minister Mervyn Silva in relation to the murder of former Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunga for further investigations into the case.

When the case was taken up before Mount Lavinia Chief Magistrate Mohammed Mihail, the CID informed Court the statements which had been recorded by second suspect former Mount Lavinia Crimes OIC Tissa Sugathapala has revealed that third suspect former DIG Prasanna Nanayakkara had pressured him to destroy and conceal evidence of the case.

The CID filling a report informed Court that it had failed to record a statement from the third suspect due to his unstable health condition.

Meanwhile, Counsel Anura Meddegoda appearing for the third suspect requested the Magistrate to make an order to the CID to complete the investigations of his client immediately due to his unstable health condition.

Accordingly, the Magistrate ordered the CID to record statements from the third suspect immediately and ordered to remand both, second and third suspects of the case until March 29.(Yoshitha Perera)

SL becomes ‘socially’ democratic again!

• Facebook now accessible to all after President lifts restrictions 
• Several rounds of top level meetings with Facebook team from India 
• PM meets Facebook for top-level meeting with AG’s Dept. and Police
• TRC to work with Facebook to prevent hate speech and incitement of violence on social media
• UN raps Facebook over Rohingya clashes in Myanmar 
• Brief meeting with IT company reps supporting Govt. effort

By Chathuri Dissanayake- Friday, 16 March 2018

After days of intense pressure to lift restrictions on social media, President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday issued instructions to unblock Facebook, effectively ending the ban that came into effect last week, following discussions with Facebook representatives.

Two regional level representatives from the social media giant held meetings with the President’s Secretary Austin Fernando, who is also the Chairman of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), and other officials of the TRC regarding Government concerns on how the site has been used as a platform to disseminate hate speech and instigate violence.

Following the meeting, President Sirisena, who is currently on an official tour of Japan, tweeted: “On my instructions, my secretary has discussed with officials of Facebook, who have agreed that its platform will not be used for spreading hate speech and inciting violence. As such, I instructed TRCSL to remove the temporary ban on Facebook with immediate effect.”

“We raised concerns about hate speech and they said they will cooperate. We will be reviewing the situation every three months or so, and if they are only paying lip services we will take action,” Fernando told the Daily FT following the meeting. 

However, Fernando, who chaired the meeting, was not clear on what specific action would be taken by the company to prevent users from abusing the platform. 

A subsequent statement released by the President’s Media Division only stated the “government will continue to work together with Facebook to prevent hate speech and misuse of the platform. Both sides will continue to engage extensively to discuss these matters.” Details on how both the Government and Facebook Inc would coordinate to stamp out hate speech were not released to the media.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also had a meeting with the two-member team from Facebook along with Telecommunications Minister Harin Fernando, State Minister of Finance Eran Wickramaratne, senior representatives of the Attorney General’s Department and Police to discuss what measures were to be taken to prevent the site from being used to propagate violence and hate speech.

“The meeting focused on what can be done going forward. They offered some insights on how SL-CERT can be more productive in dealing with the issues,” a highly-placed source privy to the details of the meeting told the Daily FT.

Although a request to set up a company office in the country was made, the representatives did not give an immediate undertaking but promised to convey the message to the headquarters, the source said.

The move comes following an announcement by the Prime Minister on Wednesday about moves to bring in new legislation to monitor social media platforms to prevent hate speech and the spreading of communal tensions.

The President’s Media Division in a statement explained that the Government took steps to restrict access to social media tools temporarily to curtail attempts to spread communal violence across the country, misusing social media in a manner detrimental to national harmony.

“In a context where the impact that could be made by social media to expeditiously increase violent actions based on racism and religious extremism has been internationally proven, Sri Lanka was able to control the rapid spread of violence by temporarily imposing restrictions on social media as an action to ensure the national and public safety of Sri Lanka,” it said.

The Government last week blocked a host of social media platforms and communication apps in a bid to contain communal violence spreading across the country’s hill capital of Kandy, which saw two people dead and hundreds of homes and shops torched.

Facebook Inc has been facing severe criticism for its role in inciting violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar as well. UN human rights experts investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said on Monday that “hate speech and incitement to violence on social media is rampant, particularly on Facebook. To a large extent, it goes unchecked.”

Earlier this week the Government took steps to gradually ease the restrictions imposed on communication apps, with the Viber and Whatsapp messaging services returning to normal on Wednesday and yesterday respectively. A restriction on photo-sharing service Instagram was also lifted yesterday. 

In a brief meeting with IT sector company representatives, the visiting Facebook officials discussed possibilities of cooperation.

“They have a bottleneck where the technology needs to be adjusted to local languages. So we can customise this to local languages. We will be in touch in the future to devise the way forward,” Federation of Information Technology Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS) Chairman Dr. Kithsiri Manchanayake told the Daily FT.

Representatives of FITIS are also scheduled to meet the TRC Chairman on Monday to discuss how best the corporate sector can support the Government team.

“We will also propose that a committee should be formed with representation from all sides to find solutions,” he said.

Govt. begins Digana compensation 

The Prime Minister’s Office, in a statement yesterday, said that compensation for those affected by violence in the Kandy District had begun to be provided with priority being given to religious institutions.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced the decision to provide compensation to those affected during a special address to Parliament last week. The Prime Minister had advised priority compensation be given to religious institutions damaged in the clashes that erupted in Digana and later spread to other areas of Kandy.

A mobile service providing compensation will also be held at the Kandy Divisional Secretariat today, the statement said.

“The aim is to complete providing compensation in as short a time as possible,” it added, but did not give any details as to how much compensation would be dispensed.   

Cornered to unite Sri Lanka needs unity beyond sympathy and solidarity Strong platform with Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim presence to condemn and challenge extremism need of the hour

 The GMOA could have easily addressed and provided a guarantee that there is no such drug or chemical that can make a person permanently barren

What then is their strength? It is their very loud and threatening presence in mainstream media, more than in social media.

In Sinhala Buddhist dominant rural districts, Buddhist monks came a cropper

Post-war Sri Lanka has by now gone through five violent anti-Muslim orgies, orchestrated by extremist Sinhala Buddhist groups-from Aluthgama-Beruwala riots in June 2014, through Mahiyangana, Gintota, Ampara and the still smouldering Digana-Theldeniya savagery in the Kandy District.

2018-03-16 

These are no conflicts between Sinhala and Muslim communities. There would not have been human stories of Sinhala Buddhist citizens in conflict areas immediately and voluntarily stepping in to provide safety and security to Muslim families and property, if this conflict were  between communities

.
Sinhala people have not been part of these savage attacks led by few stray Buddhist monks and other extremist thugs. Distance the people keep with Sinhala Buddhist extremism is evident even in electoral politics.

The JHU (Then led by the trio Champika, Ven. Rathana Thera and Gammanpila) expected to sweep the board at the 2004 Parliamentary Elections by fielding Buddhist monks. The results were disastrous. 

Just seven Buddhist monks were elected from four districts with an all island vote percentage of 5.9% that gave two more from the National List.

The JHU (Then led by the trio Champika, Ven. Rathana Thera and Gammanpila) expected to sweep the board at the 2004 Parliamentary Elections by fielding Buddhist monks. The results were disastrous.

In Sinhala Buddhist dominant districts, the JHU polled only 22,826 votes in Galle (94.1% Buddhists), 16,229 in Matara (94.1% Buddhists), 1,538 in Hambantota (96.9%  Buddhists), 2,675 in Moneragala (94.4% Buddhists) and 37,459 in Kurunegala (89.1% Buddhists).

Where they gained from were all Sinhala Buddhist trader dominated urban districts; in Colombo (70%) JHU polled 18%, in Gampaha (71.7%) polled 19.4%, in Kalutara (82.9%) polled 10.1% and in Kandy (73.3%) polled 6.7%.

Politically what it says is, in Sinhala Buddhist dominant rural districts, Buddhist monks came a cropper, while in Sinhala Buddhist trader dominant urban districts they fared marginally better.
The JHU thereafter did not contest any election on its own. Nor did it remain intact to contest, splitting into three factions, Champika Ranawaka ending with the UNP.

Buddhist monk Ven. Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thera, the Sinhala Buddhist volcanic figure that dominates Sinhala Buddhist extremism fared even worse. He contested the 2015 August Parliamentary Elections from Kalutara District one year after he led the Muslim riots in Aluthgama-Beruwala, expecting the Sinhala Buddhists to rally round him. With a population of 70.4% Sinhala Buddhists, their all island total was only just 20,377 votes, while their leader Ven. Gnanasara Thera polled a Preference Vote of only 5,727 in the Kalutara District. Clearly, there is no people’s support for these Sinhala Buddhist extremist groups. It is an insignificant 0.18% endorsement they had from mainly Sinhala Buddhist dominated 16 districts.

What then is their strength? It is their very loud and threatening presence in mainstream media, more than in social media. 

As an aggressive anti Muslim urban emergence, they have an attraction with the urban middle-class. They are assured financial and logistical support from big time urban trader community for their very openly hostile anti-Muslim campaigns.

Their “anti-Halal” campaign and this time too with Muslim business and property being targeted, it was more than evident these Sinhala Buddhist extremist violence is an anti-Muslim “market war”.
It is this “market war” against Muslims that provide them with urban middle-class professional and academic attraction and support too.

GMOA, as the voice of medical professionals, had the social responsibility of countering this false anti-Muslim propaganda with facts on sterility..it could have easily addressed the media and provided a guarantee...

In this very competitive free market that has always been facilitated by a Sinhala Unitary State, competition is being reduced to ethno-religious divisions. 

With Sinhala Buddhist dominance, the political strategy is to eliminate the competitor instead of competing on quality, service and efficiency.

Thus their support base extends from the Sinhala Buddhist trader community to the Sinhala Buddhist middle-class academics and professionals.

One serious negligence of professional responsibility is in the medical profession- its vociferous Trade Union the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA).  

For some time now, the Sinhala Buddhist extremism has been accusing Muslim traders and businessmen of using contraceptive medicine when serving Sinhalese that lead to permanent sterility. They alleged such chemicals are even spread on garments and intimate wear sold to Sinhala customers. This was campaigned vigorously through social media and by ‘word of mouth’ quoting unheard of sources as ‘proof’. On February 26, a restaurant in Ampara was stormed by a Sinhala mob and an employee was forced to accept that they mixed such drugs when serving food for Sinhalese. That video went viral on social media.

The GMOA as the voice of medical professionals had the social responsibility of countering this false anti-Muslim propaganda with factual evidence on sterility. The GMOA could have easily addressed the media and provided a guarantee to society that there is no such drug or chemical available that can make a person permanently barren.

Though the GMOA have been vociferous against the ETCA (Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement) that is hardly about health and medicine, and was against SAITM, they have not thought it their duty to step into educate people and avoid an unnecessary, unwanted
violence in society. 

They instead remain silent supporters of this anti Muslim campaign.

So are academics. They have not engaged in serious intellectual discourses on politics of racial violence, of majoritarian extremism, that in Sri Lanka is not just racism, but “structural racism”. It is academics, who should raise issues with national education being a facilitator of “structural racism” beyond Sinhala language and its use in State administration.

Allegations over Police inaction and STF collusion in Digana, serious concerns about Police inquiries and investigations in Ampara and about pro-Sinhala bias in the legal profession and in the Judiciary- all reflect the depth of structural racism in the country. 

These are issues that the academia should have been discussing with due intellectual honesty.  The University teachers trade union federation the FUTA could have been the collective platform for such intellectual discourses within the academia and for the undergrad population. The FUTA never stood up to that social responsibility to date. It was also meek and weak in condemning racial attacks against minority communities.  

The Sinhala FUTA leadership did not even introduce the Muslim academic representatives who were seated in the head table during the media briefing they held on 12 March, to condemn recent ‘communal violence’ as they termed it. The FUTA leadership thus played out a pathetic role in addressing the media avoiding their academic and intellectual responsibility in challenging the school curricula and syllabi.

Backed by urban Sinhala Buddhist trader community, such silent and willing compromise by professionals and academics is one major reason that allows space for these small groups to make big noise and create mayhem.  It is their synergic effect that allows continued Sinhala Buddhist violence to keep coming back, more violent every time they emerge. Mainstream media and political leaderships then give them undue publicity and prominences, making them look much larger and dynamic than they are in real life.

Any Government with a decent and a civilised approach to politics that has authority over the State, can easily lock them up using law of the land and in the name of peace, unity and stability. ICCPR Act provides necessary provisions if the Government can find a strong backbone to implement the law. Continued emergence of these violent Sinhala Buddhist groups is proof that the Government is unable to command authority. This was what President Sirisena recently told a Sinhala newspaper, where he found fault with the Human Rights Commission (HRCSL). He needs to compromise with security forces and the Police and thus cannot allow HR as in Europe, was what he said.

He forgets as signatory to almost all international conventions and Charters, we are obliged to honour human and civil rights of citizens without bias or prejudice to any ethnicity, religion, caste, gender or employment/livelihood. 

The President needs to know the HRCSL is not commenting on European standards, but on civilised human standards, he is held responsible for. It is also evident this unity government of President Sirisena and PM Wickremesinghe is not going to challenge Sinhala Buddhist extremism.

They are now more concerned about social media and worried about paying compensation to victims. That is made possible and easy for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Government with urban middle-class demands for unrestricted social media access than eradicating Sinhala Buddhist extremism. Therefore it becomes necessary for more concerned and politically aware citizenry groups to forge a tri-ethnic national platform to challenge this Sinhala Buddhist extremism, politically and stand for reason and justice to all citizens.

Muslim leaders need to understand that they cannot continue their frictions with and animosities against Tamil people with continued efforts to win the confidence of dominant Sinhala Buddhist politics. On the flip side, Tamil leaders need to know it is this same Sinhala Buddhist extremism that denies them their share of power in a united, single country. Thus they should also understand that they stand to gain, if they can unite with Muslim people in standing strong against Sinhala Buddhist extremism.

Therefore it is now an unavoidable  ‘unity’ the country requires in a tri-ethnic national platform against this Sinhala Buddhist extremism, a violent menace that wrecks havoc on humanity.
A strong national platform with Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim presence is required to condemn and challenge Sinhala Buddhist extremism, while demanding the Government they
walk their talk.

Recent Anti-Muslim Assaults In Sri Lanka: Fact & False

By Mohamed Fowsar –MARCH 15, 2018

Mohamed Fowsar

In the local government elections of 2018, the ruling political parties, United National Party and Sri Lanka Freedom Party did not achieve the expected victory. The political alliance of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa won the most of local government bodies all over the country. It gave a boost to the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist forces like Rajapaksa ally. On the other hand, the election results had created internal crisis within the national government.

In the midst of the political turmoil that emerged after the local government election, the agenda of Sinhala Buddhist nationalist forces began to work well. As the initial phase, these forces attacked a mosque and several business establishments in Ampara town in the eastern province. The violence was unleashed by mobs, claiming that sterilizing pills are used in the Muslim hotels. In particular, fraudulent allegations were made by some Sinhalese youths that the sterilizing pills are mixed in a food called ‘Kottu rotti’ which is sold in a Muslim hotel in Ampara.

The above incident was well-planned and provocative without any proven reasonable grounds. It is noteworthy that a number of doctors have been told that long-term sterilizing pills have not yet been discovered by the medical world and they have also demonstrated the fact that any efficient pills in the hot foods like ‘Kottu rotti’ will be inactive in any circumstances. In this regard, the Government report later confirmed that the sterilizing content was not used in the particular food.

One of the reasons behind this incident is the deliberate intent of the violence that has been planned against Muslims. Any argument may be legally permitted when it is found in any of the disadvantages substances within the food for the sake of an argument. Otherwise, the issue should be limited to those who are related to the particular business man. But something else happened.

A number of shops belonging to Muslims in the city were attacked on the planned basis by claiming that there was no one. One only religious worship place of Muslims in the city was subjected to severe attacks. During this time many Muslim vehicles were burned down and many of the Muslims were injured by indiscriminate attacks.

Following Ampara incident, the Sinhalese mobs unleashed the violence against Muslims in Digana area in the central province. The immediate cause of this violence was the attack on Sinhalese youth from Muslim youths who were drunk. However, the particular incident should be dealt in the legal ground. But Sinhalese mobs used the incident for their well-planned propaganda against Muslims. After the death of attacked Sinhalese youth, mobs destroyed Muslims’ mosques, business establishments and homes in Digana and surrounding areas. A Muslim youth was also killed by these attacks and many crores of valuable assets were wrecked. Although the security forces were invited to control the incident, they did not take any prompt action.

The above hazardous situations was immediately spread out to other parts of the Kandy district and resulted in a number of attacks against Muslims. It is noteworthy to mention that all these raids were in place when the police curfew was in force. In the midst of these bouts, peoples lost the confidence in the government forces and the government was accused of failing to act fast enough to protect Muslim minority. The pressures on the government were also increased. As a result, the government declared the state of emergency, imposed ban on social media and arrested ten suspects behind the wave of anti-Muslim attacks. 

These violence are not the first time in the case of Sri Lankan Muslims. There have been many unpleasant incidents in the past. All these incidents are caused by the rapid increase in anti-Muslim sentiments amongst the section of Sinhala Buddhist hardliners. From the beginning, these forces are making a number of false allegations on several matters such as halal food, Muslim women’s dress code, slaughtering animals, Muslims’ population growth and Muslim students’ entrance to the Law College. In fact, there are many factors behind the above accusations such as Islamic revitalization, Islamophobia, symbolic Islam, ethno-religious nationalism and external interests.

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