Generally for more than half the day, connections are out. More than one lakh mobile phone users are there in Jaffna.
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There might still be an important use: http://www.witness.org/
If there is access to mobile phones with cameras.
also:
http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iArticleId=3757942&iSectionId=2891
SH, thanks for flagging the use of mobile phones for conflict transformation. It’s an issue I’m deeply interested in and have written extensively about (see http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2007/04/29/draft-paper-on-mobile-phones-and-activism and also the other posts at the article). I intend to initiate some projects this year to ascertain to what degree all this is possible in SL, given that the major telecoms companies are highly unwilling to put their money where their mouth is to support peacebuilding in Sri Lanka.
Re your link to the article on ballot rigging in the Middle East, also see http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2007/01/16/the-new-arab-conversation-blogging-in-the-middle-east on how blogs and blogging is changing the dynamics of governance in a region defined by a democratic deficit.
Thanks Sanjana.
Will read it with interest.
Hope this will do something to help grass roots activism which I feel is lacking.
Read through some of the links you gave me, including the paper. Still have more to go.
I was actually thinking, even if there are not communication links, the mobile phone which is unobtrusive can be used to document evidence.
I also found it quite chilling, reading one of the examples in the paper you linked to where I think, the Egyptian police brazenly uploaded the footage on Utube, to humiliate the blogger. It illustrates the mindset of these people, where they view the victims predicament to be more shameful than the act they commited. I sense the same lack of shame relating to some of the overt thuggery accross the board (eg. from Mervyn Silva, Gotabhaya and even Buddhist monks, to the Sri Lankan Army, Karuna, LTTE etc) that is evident in Sri Lankan society. This overt thuggery could just be the tip of the iceberg.