Sri Lanka’s 30 year-civil war, which ended in 2009, caught international attention over war crimes and severe human rights violations after Sri Lankan armed forces murdered, executed, raped, and tortured millions of Tamil civilians in the northeast region of Sri Lanka.
Efforts to establish accountability for the massacre of the Tamil civilians was almost achieved when a soldier from the Sri Lankan armed forces was sentenced for murdering eight Tamil civilians. However, this was reversed when the president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, pardoned the soldier, keeping to his pledge of releasing “war heroes”. Accountability for war crimes has still not been achieved, and justice for the war crimes is still being sought by many, including the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.
During the final stages of the civil war, an estimated 100,000 Tamils were killed in Mullivakal. A monument was built in Jaffna University in 2019 commemorating these last civilians who died. On 9 January 2021, this monument was demolished after the University Grants Commission voiced that this monument was a threat to the unity of Sri Lanka. Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera said that “no one should be allowed to commemorate dead terrorists”. The demolition triggered protests and hunger strikes by students and other Tamils who had been distressed by the demolition. “This is a deliberate provocative act knowing well that memorials are to do with emotions,” a Tamil legislator said.
The lack of justice for mass killings over several decades coupled with the recent demolition of a war memorial spurred a five-day march held in early February 2021 across Sri Lanka’s north and east regions. Despite several court orders demanding the protests to stop, both Tamils and Muslims assembled to peacefully protest from Pottuivil in Amparai to Polikandy in Jaffna, marking two geographical points on the island that were traditionally the motherland for Tamils. The Sri Lankan government’s armed forces attempted at many stages throughout the five-day rally to disintegrate the protesters using intimidation and threats, however this did not deter the protestors, and they courageously continued. The rally was supported by millions of Tamils both in Sri Lanka and internationally, with the Tamil diaspora sharing posts with the hashtag #P2P.
The rally aimed to bring international attention to several key concerns including: land grabbing in Tamil areas, enforced disappearances, threatening activists and journalists, the detention of political prisoners without trial, raising the wages of Tamil plantation workers, and not allowing Tamil survivors and the diaspora to commemorate people who lost their lives in the war.
As reported by The Hindu, a civil society activist said “the government is being extremely insensitive, very unreasonable and is shutting out any space there is for dialogue. A totalitarian government like this endangers the rights and freedoms of not just minority communities. It will also threaten the Sinhalese majority…I hope this struggle inspires people in the south (India) to raise their voices.”
As the rally continued, social media such as Instagram was consumed with images of people wearing masks and black headbands reading “P2P” and posts glorifying the protesters for their bravery, camaraderie, and unity throughout the protests despite facing several challenges. Similarly, the music streaming platform Spotify had an influx of songs glorifying the protesters.
Throughout the digital uproar, posts that were being circulated to raise awareness about the rally and in general about the justice being sought for the murdered civilians were being circulated with the hashtags #tamileelam and #eelam. Social media giant Instagram suddenly blocked these hashtags. Thus, people could no longer see the posts relating to the protests or use the hashtag without being interrupted with a notification from Instagram reading “your post goes against our community guidelines”.
Several distressed youth took to Twitter to call on the platforms to release the ban on the hashtags, with one user tweeting “Is #TamilEeelam tag not allowed on social media? Why does a traditional homeland—why does a people’s quest for self-determination—why does talk of autonomy lead to such immense censorship? Doesn’t this enable a genocide, doesn’t this amount to erasing history—identity—memory?’’ Another user tweeted “Instagram has removed the hashtags…due to pressure from SL (Sri Lankan) authorities. These are indigenous #Tamil words. You’re silencing the #oppressed and amplifying the voices of the #oppressor. This is not ok. #istandwitheelam #srilankangenocide.”
This is not the first-time that activists have been restricted from sharing posts about human rights violations and social injustice. In June 2020, when George Floyd was tragically murdered, “hashtag activism” encountered hurdles imposed by platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. In a report by The Independent, Instagram users were greeted with messages such as “action blocked” when they attempted to share posts about the Black Lives Matter movement. The temporary ban continued for a week before Instagram responded to users who raised their concerns about the popular platform’s messages giving no context as to why the post was blocked. It simply said that they “restrict certain content and actions to protect our community”. Further, a TikTok user had voiced that view counts of hashtags related to Black Lives Matter and other videos in relation to the killing of George Floyd had disappeared. After serious concerns were raised by users across all social media platforms, TikTok responded to say that it was caused by a “random” bug.
After concerns were raised about Instagram blocking the hashtags in relation to Sri Lankan Genocide, Instagram removed the ban. However, it was not a full release but what is known as a “shadowban”. This means that the platform limits the content reach under that hashtag by restricting visibility and that the posts under the hashtag do not appear on the Explore Page but only to the user’s followers.
Several Tamils have started raising serious concerns as to whether social media giants and their censorship are contributing to genocide, destroying any chance of justice being achieved, and creating another form of oppression. A petition was started asking to “Stop The Erasure of Tamil Eelam on Social Media Platforms—Instagram & Spotify”. A participant of the petition commented: ‘’The Sri Lankan government is trying to erase out identity. People go to jail for identity theft but a nation is erasing our whole identity, which is worse than just stealing.”
Kaya Kannan has an undergraduate in mathematics and has completed the Graduate Diploma in Law. She is a paralegal in public law and is currently building a career in human rights law with specific interests in discrimination and Equality Act claims, as well as human rights violations that took place during the Sri Lankan civil war'.