A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, June 4, 2017
Disaster response
by Sanjana Hattotuwa-June 3, 2017
The
most obvious disaster around the recent flooding in Sri Lanka was not
caused by weather. For the entirety of the height of the disaster, the
Minister tasked with Disaster Management wasn’t anywhere close to the
areas affected, or even in Sri Lanka. Instead of returning back to the
country urgently to deal with a real disaster, the Minister was instead
in Mexico, speaking about disasters. News media subsequently reported
that on the way back to Sri Lanka, he had also broken his journey in
Dubai. No news report to date suggests any degree of contrition. Anger
directed against the missing Minister on social media in particular took
the form of cartoons, memes, tweets, Facebook posts and a petition to
call for his resignation.
The Minister’s absence was a metaphor for the government’s disaster
preparedness, which remains, even in 2017, a good idea. Donors
supporting various government line ministries, agencies and departments
tasked with disaster risk reduction and early warning need to question,
scale back or stop funding. The intended outcomes of loans, technical
assistance, grants, knowledge transfers and other measures to strengthen
the country’s ability to plan for and mitigate the impact of extreme
weather are very far from being achieved. This is basic corruption that
bilateral and multilateral donors are supporting – for those in relevant
government bodies to enjoy the benefits of training, both local and
foreign, equipment and funding, with little to nothing to show for it by
way of actual work and warning.
Over just the past few years, we have seen this gross negligence leading
to the untimely death of hundreds, including children and infants. Tens
of thousands have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands of homes have
been fully or partially destroyed. This is statistical fact, not
conjecture, hyperbole or partisan rhetoric. And yet, not a single
official or Minister has taken responsibility and even offered to
resign. Not a single Minister who owns, or received and didn’t go on to
sell off-road capable luxury SUVs were seen in their constituency taking
the vehicles out to help flood relief operations, unlike many citizens
with similar vehicles who did. With each disaster, the earlier ones are
forgotten. And the circus just goes on.
Social media provides a vector through which citizens, tired of and
angry with government, are directly helping others in distress. The
communication, collaboration and coordination in response to the
flooding this year were mediated over social media to an unprecedented
degree. The broad contours of entirely organic movements over social
media to provide relief and support are already familiar, starting with
the flooding from last year to the drought earlier this year. Some
aspects of this are worth noting for at least one simple reason. A
government writ large, and disaster management authorities in particular
unable or unwilling to tap into, monitor, verify, action and archive
this wealth of information is not one that is capable of saving lives.
There is a growing body of research which looks at the role and
relevance of social media content in early warning, disaster response
and relief operations, pegged to factors like the media used, medium,
language, cost, accessibility and volume. All available research
suggests the amount of information produced over social media alone, if
ingested in a meaningful and methodical manner, can help official
disaster relief operations, contribute to early warning and help in
mitigation. Sri Lanka is not there yet, by a long shot. What we do find
is the use of social media largely by citizens, for citizens – with
information flows that go from WhatsApp to Twitter to Facebook in a
matter of minutes. From databases around relief and volunteer operations
to rapidly updated lists of collection points, from private taxi
companies with their apps facilitating boats and even air support
services to the hot-wiring of government agencies with crowd sourced
Tamil translation capacity, social media plays a critical role in
disaster response entirely independent of government.
This year, Facebook and Twitter played a visibility larger role than
with the flooding that gripped the country last year. The hugely
successful donation campaign of lunch packets at the Fort Railway
Station was facilitated over social media in general, and Facebook in
particular. Facebook is now a viable vector into key demographic groups
across geography, and importantly, primarily in Sinhala. The
communication of and collaboration around relief operations using
Facebook has clear implications for information flows far beyond
disasters, including, importantly, information flows leading up to a
referendum. The same can be said of Twitter. 28,237 tweets were produced
in just one week around the response to flooding using four key
hashtags on the platform, #floodsl, #floods17, #floodsl2017 and
#slflood.
Twitter India published, for the first time around any major disaster in
Sri Lanka, a list of key accounts including civic media, journalists,
the Disaster Management Centre and the spokesperson of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. At the height of the flooding, Twitter produced well
over two tweets a minute with one or more of the hashtags archived,
which is for our country an unprecedented volume. Information on Twitter
was so important and timely, guides were published on how to get vital
updates published by for example the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) on
Twitter alone over SMS to any mobile phone, using any network.
The DMC, waking up from deep slumber, stepped up their use of social
media. Ordinary citizens, not anyone government, helped with the
verification of their Twitter account, thereby raising the credibility
of their content. Collaborating with the Gudppl initiative helped DMC
publish life-saving information. This was in Tamil also, and not just in
English or Sinhala. They asked those affected and others to send in
photos of affected areas, which were published on a web based map. They
publicised WhatsApp groups linked to relief operations. They engaged
with enraged citizens over Twitter, and put out content in a carefully
curated manner, which though late to begin with, was much appreciated.
Social media was also responsible in flagging the role and selfless
actions of government officials, even as their Ministers, Heads of
Agencies and Departments and the official systems failed them miserably.
It seems that in the absence of any sort of official recognition,
social media is all they have to vent their frustration with what lies
beyond their control, and be praised for doing what they can.
Particularly because of the violent and divisive antics of Gnanasara
Thero just one week prior, a number of social media updates, with
compelling entirely citizen generated photography, focussed on how
religion and ethnicity played no part in determining relief and recovery
efforts. This content went viral. Those in government tasked with
reconciliation were encouraged to archive and showcase this content in
the months ahead, to combat the rise of what remains a festering,
unresolved issue over the hate and dangerous speech produced by the BBS,
with near complete impunity.
Other questions remain, from the technical to the practical. Government
agencies publishing life-saving information, even in 2017, continue to
use proprietary, closed formats that lock in vital information, instead
of opening it out. Disaster reporting itself remains a casualty. The
mainstream media including social media focussed on deaths and
destruction, which is understandable. But there is little to no focus on
underlying causes for these disasters, save for the simplistic
reporting around rainfall. Deforestation, environmental devastation,
lack of disaster risk reduction in urban planning and indeed,
ill-advised urban development and other related issues simply go
under-reported, at best. Every time, the disaster itself generates
headlines and hand-wringing, but what contributes to it, never does. It
is unclear to what degree the DMC, which got the capacity to work in
Tamil during the flooding, will retain this capacity. Above all, will
government takes accountability seriously?
At a basic minimum, a government that expects to remain in power and win
a referendum needs to ensure citizens don’t unnecessarily die. This
isn’t rocket-science. It’s basic common-sense. Tellingly, not only does
it elude those in power, they don’t really seem to care.