In the days of Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s efforts to crush dissent of any and every description during the first JVP uprising of the very early ‘seventies,’ something very similar occurred and the wildest of wild rumours achieved gospel-like credibility, bolstered by occurrences unheard of before then such as the disposal of piles of bodies under burning motor vehicle tyres. To someone of my vintage, this comes as no surprise. Typically, the suppression of normal avenues of discussion and debate has led to information, sometimes wildly speculative and often times deliberately mischievous, reaching not only epidemic proportions but achieving a degree of hitherto-unprecedented credibility. Typically, the government has sought, with varying degrees of success, to block the latter which the public hitherto had free access to via the internet. There appear now to be two streams of public expression – the “bought and paid for press” and the elements under threat, on one hand and the “underground” media, “underground” for Sri Lanka, that is.
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