Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared that social media on the island is to come under closer scrutiny from the government, whilst speaking in Shangai last week.
Rajapaksa had told the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) that,
“We witnessed the corrupt use of social media to create domestic unrest and cyber crime. Youth have been targeted and they became pawns of misplaced agendas. These are dangerous trends that need to be arrested and addressed effectively through this forum.”
He reportedly went on to tell Chinese President Xi Jinping,
“With the spread of cyber crime causing unrest in countries, Sri Lanka wishes to take precautions against such acts”.
The announcement follows on from comments last year, where he labelled Facebook “a plague” which was affecting the younger generation on the island.
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