Fifth Estate: Paradoxes of Digital Power
World audiences remain riveted to phone, computer and television screens, shocked as we all are by the bloody carnality of the war in Palestine, the graphic horror gripping attention by its lurid…
Right to Information
RTI content.
The Online Safety Bill: A Trojan Horse
On September 18, 2023, the Government of Sri Lanka published a Bill titled “Online Safety” and this was subsequently tabled in parliament on October 3. The Bill aims to establish an Online…
Freedom of Movement in Sri Lanka and Human Rights Commission
On December 8, 2023, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) determined that the Navy had violated my right to freedom of movement by blocking me from traveling to the remote…
Press Freedom in Cyber Civilization
Brief Generations of Sri Lankans have experienced many curfews and states of emergency and also experienced the bloody harm suffered by curfew violators. But successive insurgencies spanning all parts of the country…
Data Protection Bill Allows for Violation of Civil Rights
With the misuse of laws, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which are aimed at protecting the rights of citizens but are actually used to stifle them,…
Criminalising Disinformation: Neither the Time nor the Place
A public conversation on criminalising disinformation has re-emerged in Sri Lanka. The government recently announced that it was considering new proposals for a law to curb false and misleading statements. This conversation…
Right To Information Act at the Grassroots – Small Steps but Big Impact
That Right to Information (RTI) is a tool for increasing transparency, accountability and better governance practices is widely accepted. But what does research and data say in that regard? During a research…
October – A Bleak Month for Freedom of Expression
Today is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists October was a bleak month for freedom of expression with four cases of assault against five provincial journalists. All five…
The Last Days of the Nineteenth Amendment?
These could be the last days of the Nineteenth Amendment. If not of its entirety, at least of a part of it, even a substantial part of it. The message that the…
Challenging a Culture of Secrecy
While the Sri Lankan State maintains a culture of secrecy cemented through legislation like the Official Secrets Act, the Right to Information Act, operationalised in early 2017, is now used by citizens,…
Systemic Violence: Mapping Police Statistics On Sexual Abuse
In 2016, mapped incidents of street harassment for International Women’s Day. None of these incidents had been reported to the police. Those who contributed their stories to the map recounted experiences that remained…
The Language Barrier
Sitting on Editor Selvaraja Rajasegar’s desk is a thick envelope containing details of elephant deaths on the railway track. The information took him over a month to receive, because he made the…
Managing Chaos: Why Sri Lanka Needs To Think Long Term For Disaster Response
In 2017, filed a series of RTI requests to ascertain more about Sri Lanka’s early warning system. (Click here and here to see the original RTI requests filed with the Metereological Department and…
RTI Reveals Lanka E News Blocked On Order from President’s Office
In December 2017, received a list of 13 websites that had been blocked from 2015 onwards by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), via a Right to Information request. The documentation uncovered the…
Blocked: RTI requests reveal process behind blocking of websites in Sri Lanka
On November 8, 2017 news began to spread that website Lankaenews had been blocked across all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Sri Lanka. The website itself has continually been mired in controversy…