by Senel Wanniarachchi, ‘The Sunday Leader,’ Colombo, November 6, 2016
Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, one of the world’s most protracted and destructive conflicts of our time was brought to a bloody, military end in May of 2009. Seven years have passed since, but the communities in the country remain divided along narrow ethno-religious lines. In many ways, this is a result of the conflicting narratives held by the Sinhalese and the Tamil communities as well as the others on Sri Lanka’s history, the beginnings of the conflict and how it was brought to an end. Many Sinhalese people in the South only see the conflict as a separatist war that was initiated by terrorists who happened to be Tamil and do not recognise the years of discrimination and suppression that the Tamil people had to undergo under successive majoritarian governments in post-colonial Sri Lanka, who turned the two communities against each other for narrow political wins. Many Tamils in the North have witnessed the violence they saw in their backyards but fail to recognise that thousands of bright and innocent men and women in the South were also killed by the LTTE and fail to recognise that the Sinhalese share their woundedness. In a sense, there is almost a competition between the communities to emerge as the ultimate ‘victim’ of the conflict. These narratives have sustained overtime and have been passed down from generation to generation cemented by the media, politicians, textbooks, literature, the arts and so on. This is only exacerbated by various conspiracy theories and hate propagated by racist politicians who thrive on our differences.
The mainstream Sinhala media almost never offers any form of critique of the war or how the war was brought to an end. The ‘official’ version of history taught in Sri Lankan schools and is validated by textbooks with the state emblem teaches kids only of the ancient Kings and Queens (mostly Kings) that reigned pre-colonial Sri Lanka and the syllabi end with discussing how all communities in the country were united in their fight against the colonial ‘masters.’ Episodes of our history such as the anti-Tamil pogroms and dark yet key events in the country’s history such as the Sinhala Only Act of 1956 and the burning of the Jaffna Library are conveniently erased.
A few months back, I was a part of a team from the youth movement, Hashtag Generation which hosted two communications trainings in Sinhala and Tamil for two groups of women aspiring to run for public office from parties across the political divide. The Sinhala language training was in Colombo and the Tamil language training was held in Jaffna. All women who attended the two trainings were leaders in their communities and were already holding various positions of leadership. Meeting these two groups within the time span of two weeks showed us the stark polarity that exists between the communities in terms of the narratives they held on the conflict, inequality and transitional justice. Furthermore, whenever they were exposed to a different narrative to what they had heard all their life, there was a natural sense of resistance to accept it.
During our trainings one of the aspects that were covered is how social media could be used as an effective tool to discuss issues these women face on a day to day basis. These trainings were hosted because we really believed that, while social media in Sri Lanka, like in many parts of the world is used as a tool to spread messages of hate, incite violence and radicalise impassioned young people; it could also be a force for good – a platform where Sri Lankans from different sides of the battle-lines meet ‘the other’ and share their stories.
Now over 25.8% of Sri Lanka’s population has access to the internet. The mobile phone in particular has enabled millions to get connected, with there being more sims in the country than there are people. This figure is only bound to increase in future. Of the various social media platforms that are available, Facebook clearly dominates with over 2.5 million accounts in Sri Lanka by the end 2014. For many Sri Lankans Facebook is not just synonymous with social media, but sadly, with the internet.
However, what many Sri Lankan Facebook users probably don’t know is that what appears on our Facebook feeds, is increasingly engineered through extremely clever algorithms to reflect back to us, the world as we already see it. As such, posts with disproportionate amount of engagement (likes, clicks, comments, shares) will be seen by more and more people– this is much like the neoliberal economics of the real world where the rich gets richer and the dominant narrative – at least among your circle of friends and their friends is what you will see more of.
For the longest time, I used to unfriend my racist Facebook friends. As I woke up every morning and scrolled through the Facebook feed, I unfriended anyone in my Facebook friends list who shared Bodu Bala Sena and Sinhala Ravaya posts(and trust me there were quite a few). I felt I didn’t need the negativity in my life. What I didn’t realise at the time is that I was deleting the only windows I had to ‘the other side’, making my Facebook feed, much like the silos that are our social circles which give us the illusion of consensus when the truth is a far cry from it. Facebook says it uses thousands of factors to determine what shows up in any individual user’s feed. They judge how close you are to a person by how often you interact with them. They also judge your personal preferences based on your behaviour online. However, many people are not aware their feeds are being controlled in this way. Facebook, however, says it has addressed these concerns through options such as the ‘Unfollow’ and the ‘See First.’ However, it’s important to examine how these developments are not just shaping our digital lives but also our civic and political lives as well.
The Facebook algorithms, as clever as they are, are like any impenetrable system. If you try hard enough, you can see through it. Do not unfriend your ‘racist’ friends as they can be your window to ‘the other.’ Look for online spaces of people outside of your comfort zones, break the echo chambers of your feed. Social media could also be used to build bridges, not just burn them. Social media has enabled us to hold our governments and each other accountable. Incidents such as the burning of the Jaffna Public Library in 1981 were not covered by mainstream media at all for a long time. Another, more recent example would be the anti-Muslim riots which took place in Aluthgama in 2014. However, social media has given us endless possibilities to share and access information and made censorship an increasingly difficult task for governments. Even in the big loud tide that is the Facebook algorithms, it isn’t impossible to ensure that your voice is heard and come to terms with the fact that, maybe, just maybe you are wrong.
“In a sense, there is almost a competition between the communities to emerge as the ultimate ‘victim’ of the conflict.” I’m fed up that people want to equate a “two sides messed up narrative” when it’s so clearly and justifiably evident that one “side” has no political, economic, or social power to enfranchise themselves or even the bloody right to protest. People act like Tamils wanted to war and uproot themselves, lose everything, give up their homes, jobs, education just to fight for the right to be recognized. The Tamil people paid a big price to decide to even engage in guerilla tactics to fill a need that the political machine wouldn’t and failed to fill for them. The repression to the point you can’t even protest. Protest is only as effective as the conscience of your oppressor. Sri Lanka had none when it pushed it’s minority to the brink of self destruction. While Sinhala people were killed, it’s striking to read that Tamils somehow have the same power to effectively “oppress” them. That the Tamils even engaging in guerilla warfare weren’t also bright young men and women who had lives before them, opportunities given and now taken away. This dichotomy is false. Sinhalese people didn’t have to run away from their country, no Sinhalese people had to fear that no one would help them, they had a government behind them. Its sad that they were killed, but with that being said, Tamil people were the ultimate victims to have to have had to fight for their right to be considered human. What positives were there in their favour? Absolutely none. Clearly this author has no concept of social inequity, and social justice.