Anyone can cause riots anywhere with a mobile phone

 

By all accounts, it is a frightening scenario. The riots in England were caused by a man sitting about 8,500km away in Lahore, Pakistan.

How did he do it? From his studio, where he worked as a web designer, Farhan Asif used YouTube and Facebook to spread misinformation about the British teenage suspect in a stabbing attack that killed three girls and injured 10 other people on July 29 at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport.

Violent disorder then broke out in Southport before spreading to towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland, fuelled by misinformation, the far-right, and anti-immigration sentiment.

Farhan was linked to a website that gave a false name for the suspected Southport attacker and suggested incorrectly that he was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK on a small boat.

The article, published on the news aggregation channel - Channel3Now hours after the attack, was widely quoted in viral social media posts.

BBC quoted the police as saying that Farhan used his account “with the intent to glorify the incident about the arrest of a Muslim asylum seeker by police… and created a sense of fear, panic, insecurity in the government and the public”.

BBC had tracked down several people linked to Channel3Now and questioned someone who claimed to be “management” at the site.

That person told the BBC that the publication of the false name “shouldn’t have happened, but it was an error, not intentional”.

But the damage had already been done.

Why did he do it? Police said it was aimed at making money - driving traffic to his post.

Studies show that the falsehood was viewed over 420,000 times on social media platforms, with a reach of more than 1.7 billion, becoming a lightning rod for Islamophobic anti-immigrant vitriol, which set off a firestorm of attacks resulting in numerous loss of lives, threats to blow up mosques, as well as significant property damage.

Law and order

With the advent and growth of social media and Malaysians’ habit of forwarding unverified messages, the authorities should be concerned about our vulnerability.

All it needs is a single message with the wrong message to prompt some individuals to take the law into their own hands.

Here are some facts gleaned from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Internet Users Survey 2022:

WhatsApp is accessed by 97.7 percent of the population or 29.31 million users, based on a population of 30 million.

Facebook has 26.25 million users; YouTube has 22.89 million users, followed by Telegram (16.92 million) and TikTok (14.91 million).

Malaysians have been told that the draft of the Online Safety Bill is being fine-tuned and could be tabled at the next Parliament meeting next month.

In the meantime, existing laws must be used to stop irresponsible elements from disseminating harmful messages, falsehoods and other forms of content which undermine our communities.

Yesterday, someone sent me a video clip in which a man calls on all Malaysians to destroy everything with Chinese characters - billboards, signboards, etc.

It was a provocation to damage and destroy property, and the 57-second clip has been forwarded to the MCMC, which has begun investigations.

However, we cannot wait for the bill to become law; the authorities must use existing Communications and Multimedia Act provisions to punish offenders.

I have previously argued against the arbitrary use of Section 233. Section 233 is all-encompassing. It criminalises online content that is “obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character”.

I countered that it is excessively vague, prone to abuse, and often arbitrarily applied.

But the maker of the video clip and others like him must be prosecuted as a deterrent to prevent anyone or his ilk from destroying this country with hurtful words.

Let us not wait and douse the ambers. We must prevent the fires. - Mkini

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R NADESWARAN is a veteran journalist who writes on bread-and-butter issues. Comments: citizen.nades22@gmail.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.