Sri Lanka’s state owned daily English newspaper – Daily News, has built a conspiracy theory around the violence that erupted in Southern Sri Lanka last week, blaming a ‘foreign hand’ for orchestrating the anti-Muslim violence.

Daily News Editor Rajpal Abeynayake, has drawn comparisons between the violence that erupted in Aluthgama and Beruwala and the covert operations carried out by the US to create a regime change in Cuba.

Rajpal

“If in the US they could go to the extent of creating something that mimicked Twitter in the hope that it would reach a ‘critical mass’ from which point they could launch an Arab Spring in Cuba, who is the sleepwalking simpleton who may think it is not credible that there was a foreign hand that totally orchestrated the events of last week with the same goal they had in mind in Cuba, that of affecting regime change?” Abeynayake has questioned in the editorial.

Furthermore, he has also heavily criticized social media users who updated the ground situation in Aluthgama and Beruwala in the wake of the clashes last Sunday onwards, describing them as ‘social media vultures’.

He has accused them of carrying out a ‘vicious misinformation campaign’ and has commended the mainstream media for ‘sensibly releasing the news through a filter’.

The editorial further calls on the relevant authorities to expose these various ‘foreign hands’, which Abeynayake believes are attempting a subversion that would instigate a regime change in Sri Lanka.

“While the perpetrators of the violence have to be apprehended, and the instigators have to be appropriately dealt with, the Cuba type regime change subversion that is sought by this kind of treacherous subterfuge by various hidden hands has to be mercilessly exposed. . .”

We publish below the editorial in full;

SICK, AND ORCHESTRATED

Any head in air skeptic who does not believe that last week’s events in two Southern coastal towns could not have been orchestrated should pause a minute to consider what the US government tried to accomplish recently in Cuba.

There is no twitter in Cuba, and those who know the extent to which various US governments have gone to subvert that country ought to know that the Cubans are very brave in keeping their self contained system going, and their values untainted.

But, US subversion can be ravenous and in recent times once more, the authorities there embarrassed themselves in attempting a Cuban regime change which they have been unsuccessfully attempting now for decades — generations, really …

If in the US they could go to the extent of creating something that mimicked Twitter in the hope that it would reach a ‘critical mass’ from which point they could launch an Arab Spring in Cuba, who is the sleepwalking simpleton who may think it is not credible that there was a foreign hand that totally orchestrated the events of last week with the same goal they had in mind in Cuba, that of affecting regime change?

At this moment nobody knows the source of the subversion, but as one of our regular writers Kamal Wickremesinghe said in an interview aired on SLBC last morning the events of last week had all the hallmarks of a destabilization move that was launched with the artfully engineered support of social media, a la ‘Arab Spring’.

The main organization that is thought to have incited the violence, with its now much talked about fire eating helmsman, is but a facade for the violence that seems to be well planned, executed to a tee with precision strategizing — and supported on all levels by what are probably the trained agents of subversion on social media.

This is what Kamal Wickremesinghe said on SLBC on the program People’s Power yesterday, and this is what we in these spaces have been speculating about with more than a fair inkling of what was going on since the disconcerting events of last week began to unfold.

The supporting facts are both all too obvious. Some of them have been hinted at by Mr. Wickremesinghe, and for others nobody has to look too far.

On Twitter for example, there were certain social media vultures who tweeted while the news was seeping in from the two Southern towns about the violence, that the number of deaths was almost close to double figures.

The screenshots of these tweets are available. There were retweets of these tweets by so called responsible social media ‘citizen journalism’ outfits (!).

The sheer horrendous nature of this vulture-ism is too disturbing to contemplate.

The obvious negative consequences of such orchestrated online rumour mongering/incitement was averted because to their credit due diligence was applied by mainstream media which sometimes did sensibly release the news through a filter, something referred to as a ‘news blackout’ by the pundits.

What was better? Was it this ‘news blackout’ that palpably would have aided in the deescalation of the situation, and possibly saved lives, or the oxygen provided for the fire by irresponsible vulture media, which calls itself social media, by exaggeration of fatalities and tweeting fake pictures in some instances?

The readers can take their pick, but what remains now to be seen is who was the puppet master behind these marionettes, the entire lot — the youth who were made use of to provoke the situation, the garrulous tub thumpers who retorted in kind, the goons that took to the streets, and the pablum that kept this entire effort stuck together, the vicious misinformation campaign carried out by vulture ‘citizen journalists’?

While the perpetrators of the violence have to be apprehended, and the instigators have to be appropriately dealt with, the Cuba type regime change subversion that is sought by this kind of treacherous subterfuge by various hidden hands has to be mercilessly exposed.

Who pulled the strings — who let the vultures out? Before some misled private telecom company gives social media awards — a hare brained scheme that has to be immediately called off in the context of the above mentioned dangers — answers to the above questions are probably the top priority issue that should occupy the energies of the relevant authorities.