Dissent is not disloyalty

The Government this week announced that it would formulate stronger legislation to control hate speech on social media as a response to the Digana clashes but moderate stakeholders would be wary of what that would entail and what impact it would have on legitimate free speech. 

There are reasons for this trepidation. For starters Sri Lanka already has legislation which covers hate speech, which has not been implemented in an adequate and timely manner in the past. The advent of extremist groups in Sri Lanka is not a new phenomenon, it has been around for years and a sizeable amount of hate speech actually takes place offline in public spaces. 

This is all the more challenging because some purveyors of hate speech are also prominent community members such as Buddhist monks, and the Government has avoided taking the issue head on. In fact the tiptoeing around this issue continues to sap the Government of credibility. Even if stronger legislation is passed, moderate and progressive members of society would be concerned about whether the law would be consistently and universally implemented. 

Fresh legislation to curb hate speech on social media cannot exist without a strong monitoring system, which will likely have to be powered by State departments and law enforcement. The danger here is that in such an event, unless an independent body is established, legitimate free speech would also be flagged along with hate speech. This is infringing on the legitimate rights of citizens and their right to censure the government that they voted into power. 

In January satire site News Curry announced on its web page that it would stop publication after it was allegedly warned by authorities, indicating even criticism limited to mostly English speakers in Colombo is being met with intolerance. News Curry was meant to poke fun at the absurdity of life in Sri Lanka, particularly news and politics. If this was indeed the reason for its demise, the public has to be concerned about how stronger laws would be implemented in Sri Lanka and whether they would infringe on the hard won space of media freedom and the right to expression. 

Satire has a global history that runs back centuries of playing an important role in political commentary, at times able to tap into public sentiment and echo it better than mainstream media. It is for precisely this reason that satire and even comedy should be allowed to be a strong component of political freedom. A democracy without free speech automatically becomes a deeply flawed one and unworthy of the public which voted this Government into power in 2015. 

Cracking down on hate speech is an important part of the ‘Yahapalanaya’ mandate and there are many ways that this can be accomplished without harming free speech. However, a clear policy has to be made and government bodies, including the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) and other stakeholders, have to understand that their responsibility is twofold: to stamp out hate speech but maintain free speech. If Sri Lanka truly wants to become a mature democracy then it has to stop seeing dissent as disloyalty.