Addressing “Colombo Defence Seminar–2018,” Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared that technology driven new media including Social Media has become a source of non-traditional threat. “Global disruptive force” are using the internet and social media”,he said.
The annual Colombo Defence Seminar was a big draw this year too. Its theme was ‘Security in an Era of Global Disruptions’. Its declared objective was to share the experiences of global defence establishments in fighting the “threats from terrorism and other activities.” Military leaders, security and defence chiefs and diplomatic officials from 38 countries attended the two day event hosted by the Sri Lankan army.
Wickremesinghe, who delivered the keynote address, has cautioned about ” new global disruptive forces”. He said that an “array of traditional and non-traditional security threats” confronted governments in the 21st century. New Media including Social Media is a source of non-traditional threat, he said, and added social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other websites on the Internet are also becoming global disruptive forces.
His principal concern was what he said was the use of the Internet and social media by extremists and “violent” non-state actors.
“The 21st century opens up an age facing an array of traditional and nontraditional security threats emanating from natural calamities, climate change, human exodus and displacement, violent non state actors, issues of ethnicity, newfangled ideology, religious radicalism and political activism, with most leading to the threat of violent extremism. Though the nature of wan fare remains as in ancient times – a clash of interests between and among organized groups or state on state. However, the Science of Warfare has drastically changed.”
The nature of warfare, he said, “is shifting from physical to online” and referred to the mass revolutionary uprisings that erupted in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. “We have seen the potential of this new media to destabilise nations and affect serious change in the case of countries like Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.”
So is it possible to see Wickremesinghe’s speech as an indication of Colombo’s plans to step up “censorship” of social media and the internet? Opinion is divided.
Wickremesinghe observed: “… the nature of warfare is shifting from physical to online, owing to the increased use of computers electromagnetic spectrum and artificial intelligence in commercial, economic military and all other cutting-edge activities. Critical services at risk from a cyber-assault include, but not limited to political, economic, financial, energy, transportation, security infrastructures where vulnerability management of cyber based systems has become an extremely demanding task in the face of innovative use of technology by the attackers”.
In his view, it is essential to apply the best practice approach to reduce national vulnerabilities immediately and to develop a robust cyber security system to prevent the disruptions by attackers with collaboration of all nation states.
He added: “Moving from the virtual battle space to the real world, we encounter new trends and shapes of violent extremism. This in the spectrum of conflict, can begin from a peaceful demonstration and swing all the way through insurgency to catastrophic terrorism. Present day conflict is in this realm and fits into the space of Irregular war (IW) the violent struggle between the state and non- state actors having access to the most modern technology. These conflicts are historically protracted and test the resolve of a nation and other parties involved. There is no quick- fix or recipe that meets all irregular threats, because the nature of the new will be alien from that of the past. The state and the military must learn its lessons from the past, but the response should be on contemporary lines of action”.
Social media and the internet played a major role in the eruption of mass strikes and protests known as the “Arab Spring,” first in Tunisia, which led to the downfall of the Zine El Abidine Ben Ali regime, and then the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship in Egypt.
The “unity government” of Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena this year has confronted strikes and protests by power, railway, health, petroleum, ports, postal, water supply and plantation workers, as well as ongoing student protests against the privatisation of education, and demonstrations by peasants and fishermen.
The Sri Lankan government faces a mounting economic and political crisis with falling export earnings, a ballooning foreign debt and International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands that it deepen its austerity measures.
So is it possible to see Wickremesinghe’s speech as an indication of Colombo’s plans to step up “censorship” of social media and the internet? Opinion is divided.
Colombo systematically blocked websites during the 26-year long LTTE insurgency. The Eelam war ended in 2009 but the blockades continued.
Like its predecessor, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government has targeted social media and websites and maintains its special internet military intelligence unit, established during the war.
Last November, the Telecom Regulatory Commission (TRC), which directly comes under the president Sirisena, blocked lankaenews.com.
In March this year, Colombo banned Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp and other social media on the ground that they were being used to organise and promote anti-Muslim violence by Sinhala-Buddhist extremist groups in the central Kandy district.
Wickremesinghe has already announced that the government is formulating new laws to censor the internet and Facebook. Sri Lanka has around six million social media users i.e., around 30 percent of the population.
– by malladi rama rao
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