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Did Sri Lankan Government Shut Down Surveillance of Muslims That Could Have Stopped Attack?

Apr 30, 2019 6:00 pm By Daniel Greenfield

Why were Islamic terrorists able to massacre hundreds of Christians in Sri Lanka? As in the United States, the answer may lie in the government’s dismantling of surveillance of Islamic terrorists.

The first action of the Sri Lankan government after the bombing of churches and hotels was to shut down social media. As I noted in an article today, that effectively silenced criticism of the government.

Swisher’s Recode site also published its own post, “Sri Lanka blocks social media: shutdown shows Facebook can’t be trusted”. An actual journalist would have argued that a government shutdown of free expression shows that the government can’t be trusted. It wasn’t Facebook that failed in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government had received warnings about an incoming attack and had failed to act.

The shutdown of social media prevented the spread of information damaging to the government…

The Sri Lankan defense ministry already announced why it was blocking social media. And it isn’t to save lives. “Currently, the security sections are conducting investigations in a broad manner on these incidents and the government has taken steps to temporarily block all the social media avenues until the investigations are concluded,” its statement reads.

The military is blocking people from expressing their opinions until it finalizes its story and presents it officially to the public.

Why is the Sri Lankan government afraid of? Here may be part of the answer.

 

Sri Lanka’s former wartime defense chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said on Friday he would run for president in elections this year and would stop the spread of Islamist extremism by rebuilding the intelligence service and surveilling citizens.

He said that if he won, his immediate focus would to be tackle the threat from radical Islam and to rebuild the security set-up.

“It’s a serious problem, you have to go deep into the groups, dismantle the networks,” he said, adding he would give the military a mandate to collect intelligence from the ground and to mount surveillance of groups turning to extremism.

Gotabaya said that a military intelligence cell he had set up in 2011 of 5,000 people, some of them with Arabic language skills and that was tracking the bent towards extremist ideology some of the Islamist groups were taking in eastern Sri Lanka was disbanded by the current government.

“They did not give priority to national security, there was a mix-up. They were talking about ethnic reconciliation, then they were talking about human rights issues, they were talking about individual freedoms,” he said.

Sri Lanka’s politics are complex. And I don’t want to oversimplify them or portray Gotabaya as the answer.

But there are questions worth asking here.

The media has no interest in asking them because it wouldn’t like the answers.

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Filed Under: Sri Lanka


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Comments

  1. sidney penny says

    Apr 30, 2019 at 7:12 pm

    “Gotabaya said that a military intelligence cell he had set up in 2011 of 5,000 people, some of them with Arabic language skills and that was tracking the bent towards extremist ideology some of the Islamist groups were taking in eastern Sri Lanka was disbanded by the current government.”

    Amazing!

    As in the USA with FBI.

  2. Lydia Church says

    Apr 30, 2019 at 9:09 pm

    “The Sri Lankan government had received warnings about an incoming attack and had failed to act.”

    And by shutting down social media, it stops the spread of the warnings. Those attacked in one church might warn those heading to other churches of the attack and possible others that might occur. This way they all went in blind and no one could warn the others.

    Yes, very suspicious indeed!!!

  3. gravenimage says

    Apr 30, 2019 at 10:20 pm

    Did Sri Lankan Government Shut Down Surveillance of Muslims That Could Have Stopped Attack?
    ……………….

    This is terrifying. Certainly, we know that authorities there did nothing to protect or even warn Churches and hotels.

  4. Rufolino says

    May 1, 2019 at 3:16 am

    The French Government tried to “shut down argument” and “block the expression of opinion” about the Notre Dame fire by declaring it to be accident whilst it was still burning.

  5. CRUSADER says

    May 1, 2019 at 3:33 am

    “She shills shutdowns in Sri Lanka”

  6. na says

    May 1, 2019 at 5:59 am

    Terrorists have already started celebration when they know Bagdadi is alive.. Terrorists were active to learn bomb/fire making tutorials of Us Jihadi fire/bomb mom until her arrest.

    • gravenimage says

      May 1, 2019 at 6:15 pm

      Yes–he’s reared his ugly head again.

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