Blogger Arrested?
I’ve been trying to track down more info on this Gayan Rajapakse chap all day. I’ve got nothing solid, so please let me know. There are two reports, one that he was remanded in Matale for insulting the Rajapakses, one that he had threatened them. I can’t find the post or any corroboration. This is unique in that he was arrested for ‘web comments’. I honestly don’t know what he said or how indefensible/defensible it is, but it is chilling that he was remanded for web comments. Either way, jail sucks and I’m trying to track the kid down.
Not that the web has been untouched. A distant relative of mine is the editor of a Sirasa (MTV) website, the name of which I’ve forgotten. He was stabbed. Websites are not immune but this is the first time, I think, that someone’s been arrested for ‘web comments’. Now, I don’t know Gayan Rajapakse. I’ve heard of someone by that name being involved with Sinhala Unicode. I don’t know the site in question, nor the comments discussed. I say ‘Blogger Arrested?’ with a question mark because I don’t know. I’m not even sure if he is a blogger.
I do know that he’s a fellow web denizen of some sort and right now he’s in remand. Which sucks. I’ve been asking around but I can’t get any connection to him or his family. If you know of something or any more information please email me (indi@indi.ca). It is not good to be alone at these times and we web people should maybe stick together at times like these. Again, I’m not commenting on the case at hand because I don’t know. I’m just trying to find out.
If he threatened MR or GR then I guess he was asking for it. But when you think who would be lying in this instant, most probably it’s MR, not some teenager from Matale. It’s sad to see how MR is violating the freedom of speech and arresting people for expressing ideas.
On my second point I can’t believe how many people blog with their real identity. If you are blogging about technology, cars or a hobby that’s fine, but to blog about controversial topics like war, politics, religion it’s plain stupid. Given the situation in SL you could be bullied, arrested, beaten or killed. Aside from that fact most of these blogger (Specially in SBU) are still in school or in university. Did they stop to think how they would look like when 4-5 years down the road when potential employees google their name? Do they want to be associated with the same views at that time. What if your view on the world change? now you look at things in a different angel and but you can’t run away from the past. remember internet is PERMANENT…
On a side note if you are in SL and want to maintain the anonymity use a proxy server outside of the country with an encrypted connection. Even for this comment I’m using Vidalia a nicely packaged version of Tor.
I blog with my real name and i’m not afraid to do so. I write on poliics and what not. But that still doesn’t give any party the right to beat me up and throw me in jail. Ask me politely to take the post down with a decent reason and maybe I will ;)
Thanks for the tip! Ninjacloak doesn’t let me post comments when I browse through them so was wondering how to get around all of this.
Absolutely agree. Just as one doesn’t wander around Beijing with a “free tibet” t-shirt on, being a public blogger (unless you say very nice things about certain gentlemen) is not wise. We are living in a fascist police state, I think a lot of the younger people really don’t realise this yet but things have changed. Very much so.
Agree with M. As they say, ” coming colors NO good, no!” Get the goddamn TOR. That is the best so far, as I know. It uses SSH — Tcp/Ip frames wrapped in secure shell protocol and uses a randomly selected intermediate server.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to use TOR. Just download the TOR+FireFox bundle from the address bellow, unzip & use it . It is that simple. It is per-configured, for firefox.
http://www.torproject.org/torbrowser/
Apparently someone at CID said he was pretending to be a Rajapakse relative or something, but they said nothing in response to the actual charges of threatening. I still don’t get it.
[...] wonders about the authenticity of a news report that a netizen named Gayan Rajapakse was arrested in Sri [...]
Apperantly it’s not related to blogging.
http://webalochana.blogspot.com/2009/11/arrested-blogger-update.html
[...] by the Daily Mirror on this incident. Bloggers, justifiably alarmed, wrote many posts such as this one by Indi Samarajiva, to find out more information on the incident. And it’s on comment threads on these posts, [...]
Well Indi, you know it is the Emergency Law. They can arrest you even for this post.