(Featured image by visuals on Unsplash)
In a statement issued this week, Sri Lanka Police requested members of the public to refrain from publishing or sharing “fake news” on social media. The statement also said that those who do so may be arrested without a warrant.
I was asked to comment about this for this article on Bakamoono and I ended up writing a bit more than one quote so wanted to publish it here too.
First of all, it is important to recognise that this announcement has nothing or very little to do with “fake news” and everything to do with an authoritarian state shutting down dissent and views that are critical of it. It is the culmination of a number of arrests we’ve seen in the past year and a half, especially under the ICCPR Act and the PTA, and the chilling effect of government directives like the one restricting healthcare workers from issuing statements to the media about Sri Lanka’s Covid-19 response.
Misinformation and disinformation are serious issues that need comprehensive approaches that go beyond criminalization, including education, awareness raising, counter narratives, and state, media and platform accountability. The use of a blanket term like “fake news” in itself shows that the police and the state are not genuinely invested in addressing the issue and are more interested in using it as a catchall to shut down any kind of speech that expresses dissent and discontentment. This is further proven by the recent emergence of state sponsored/affiliated/sanctioned “fact checking” outfits who seem to be redefining what is deemed “fake” in order to suit the state’s agenda, which will no doubt be employed in this quest to identify “fake news”. It’s also worth noting that especially in the context of Covid-19, we have seen the government also share misleading information and narratives and this announcement ignores the role of the state as a purveyor of misinformation and disinformation.
This announcement should be of grave concern to everyone including marginalized groups of people like women and queer and trans folks, especially those who are further marginalized on the basis of income, class, ethnicity, religion, ability, etc. Sri Lanka has a historical and current record of police brutality and LGBTIQ people have always been at the receiving end of it, even for merely existing. So just as a number of existing laws like the PTA and the Obscene Publications Ordinance have made queer and trans people extra vulnerable, this plan to arrest without warrants will have the same effect. Given that we are increasingly using the internet, especially social media, to bring attention to violence against the community, raise funds, share information and to find each other, the sweeping use of “fake news” could be used to invalidate and criminalize some of these activities. Resulting in a double criminalization for a community that is already criminalized and victimized. This could also further shrink the already limited civic space for LGBTIQ rights activism in Sri Lanka.
And on the flip side, while the police claims that the purpose of these “fake news” arrests will be to curb “disturbances to the peace, disharmony between communities, sexual crimes against women and children, harassment to religious belief, and various frauds”, there is little to show that the police acts in the interests of queer and trans people. The modern nation state is a product of colonialism including the criminalisation and othering of LGBTIQ people, and state apparatus like law enforcement exist to perpetuate these. While offline and online violence, misinformation and disinformation against LGBTIQ people are rampant in Sri Lanka, most often we do not and cannot turn to law enforcement for relief and justice because there’s a legitimate fear of stigma and criminalisation. Therefore it is highly unlikely that this new development will serve our community.
Sachini Perera 