{"id":115234,"date":"2021-06-14T16:29:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T23:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=115234"},"modified":"2021-06-14T16:29:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T23:29:35","slug":"politically-motivated-mud-brigades-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/06\/14\/politically-motivated-mud-brigades-in-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Politically motivated mud-brigades in action?"},"content":{"rendered":"

S. AKURUGOA<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

As per\nthe media reports, the Criminal\nInvestigation Department (CID), under a special team, has been tasked with\ninvestigating those who are misleading the public by spreading false propaganda\non social media. Police Spokesman DIG Rohana has said it is an offence\npunishable under Section 98 of the Police Ordinance, that if anyone disturbs\nthe public by publishing fake news. Minister of Public Security Rear Admiral\nSarath Weerasekara too confirmed this move in his recent speech in the\nParliament describing how false propagandists were misleading public against\nhim and his close relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nshould not be any argument as to the existence of freedom of expression in a\ndemocratic society. Although citizens have the freedom of expression, but they\nalso must have a responsibility and respect other people\u2019s rights. The country\nis facing a difficult situation due to Corona pandemic similar to all the other\ncountries in the rest of the World. Country needs the support of its people\nmore than anything else at this stage to get rid of this pandemic. The current\ngovernment was elected by the people just less than 2 years ago with nearly two\nthird majority and if a politician or an individual believes this is an\nopportunity to mislead people to topple the government, that indicates nothing\nbut his\/her extent of stupidity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 No government is perfect any ware in the\nworld, same as any human being.    Every citizen has the right to criticize the\ngovernment and its activities, but it needs to be constructive and not\ndestructive. Law enforcement authorities, in any democracy,  may restrict this right if they can show that\ntheir action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to protect\nnational security, territorial integrity, public safety, health, the rights and\nreputations of other people, prevent disorders or crimes etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Divaina\neditorial dated 6th<\/sup> June 2021 under the title which roughly translated\nin to English means  \u2018overthrowing governments and\noverthrowing toilet buckets\u2019 too, quite rightly exposed some of the individuals\n(by name  and giving examples) who are\nresponsible for   spreading politically\nmotivated rumours, identifying the extent of harm done by them to the country\nat large at this crucial stage . Some of these politically motivated mushroom\nrumour-mongers are appearing in media as convenors of various citizens\u2019\norganisations and similar NGOs organisations which we have not heard before.\nSome of them are appearing as so-called journalists, environmentalists,\nacademics and specialists representing various professions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nremember how similar\npolitically motivated movements with strong evidence   having links to LTTE going under various\nnames, came out with their usual slogans of \u2018free\u2019, \u2018fair\u2019, \u2018abduction\u2019, \u2018human\nrights\u2019, etc. which were useful to the terrorist outfit and risking the\nsecurity of the country and its leaders and attempted to manipulate the\nsituation to discredit the government during the three decades of war against\nterrorism. We also remember how some politicians, parliamentarians, NGO\npersonal, academics, journalists and even some of the servicemen who were\nserving the LTTE in various ways. Some of these personal were said to be in the\npayroll of the LTTE. Thus this is not the first time that incidents of\ntreacherous acts of people were reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike\nthose days, apart from television channels and websites, we have facebook,\nvarious YouTube channels, WhatsApp etc providing information\/ communication\nwhich are helpful to the public in general. \nUnfortunately, these developments appear to be providing more avenues\nfor the treacherous elements to enhance their activities via social and other\nelectronic media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the\nobvious question, that arises after noticing the above activities identified in\nthe said editorial of the news paper, is, – are we expecting to compromise the future\nof a nation, against those who call themselves journalists, environmentalists,\nactivists, convenors,  specialists etc and manage\nto get access to the media and engage in deliberately publishing fake news\nwhich are harmful to maintain the public security, religious and communal\nharmony, religious believes,  public health\n  etc\ncausing inconvenience to the country and its people? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S. AKURUGOA As per the media reports, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), under a special team, has been tasked with investigating those who are misleading the public by spreading false propaganda on social media. Police Spokesman DIG Rohana has said it is an offence punishable under Section 98 of the Police Ordinance, that if anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s-akurugoda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}