The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRC) has secured the unblocking of a social media user from the official Sri Lanka Police Facebook page, after the user filed a complaint that the state institution had restricted his account for posting critical comments.
Rukshan Priyanath said in a Facebook post sharing the HRC correspondence that he was blocked after commenting critically on the police force online. He filed a complaint with the commission, arguing that a state institution should not block citizens from accessing official communications and that the action raised concerns over freedom of expression.
According to Priyanath, the Police Media Division told the HRC the block was not deliberate and may have been applied automatically by Meta’s platform tools. He noted, however, that Meta had not sent him any notification of an automated action — undermining the explanation that the restriction was system-generated rather than manual.
Priyanath said he has since been unblocked and called for greater accountability in how public bodies operate online. He argued that criticism of state institutions “should not be equated with opposition to them,” and that public engagement requires citizens to retain access to official channels regardless of the views they have expressed.
The case sets an early precedent for how the HRC handles complaints about state institutions restricting individual access to government social media accounts — an area not directly covered by traditional press-freedom frameworks but increasingly central to how Sri Lankans receive official information.
The Sri Lanka Police Facebook page is one of the force’s primary public communication channels, used to publish accident alerts, missing person notices and arrest announcements. The ruling comes after the Online Safety Act’s first case was filed through the courts, putting Sri Lanka’s digital expression rights into renewed focus.
