Twitter Blocked a Country
Reading Time: 5 minutesOnce again, the platform acquiesces in Modi’s India., Twitter blocked Pakistan in India—the latest example of censorship on behalf of Modi’s government.
On Wednesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a virtual address at the second-ever Summit for Democracy, hailing his country as the ‘best example of democracy in the world.’ As Modi’s words were beamed out to dozens of other nations, the Indian government was cracking down on its citizens’ digital rights—again.
The same day Modi addressed the summit, Reuters reported, Twitter ‘withheld’ Pakistan’s official account from access by India-based users ‘in response to a legal demand,’ as reads the language you now see on all @GovtOfPakistan tweets if you live in India. This marked the third time Twitter India has restricted Pakistan’s account over the past year with little explanation, as well as the troubling continuation of a monthlong censorship blitz. Two weeks ago, police forces in the state of Punjab kicked off a manhunt for Amritpal Singh Sandhu, the militant ringleader of a movement to grant India’s Sikhs their own sovereign nation. As Sikhs across Punjab rallied in support of Singh, authorities arrested hundreds of them and shut down internet and SMS networks across the state for days on end—affecting about 30 million Punajbis. Indian authorities, who have still not caught Singh, have kept up a strategy of information control: Last week, as Rest of World reported, Twitter blocked 122 accounts from Indian view per a government request, including those of prominent Sikhs like poet Rupi Kaur and Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh who live outside of India and, in the latter’s case, had publicly voiced concerns over the Punjab crackdown. (Notably, many Sikhs in the United States and Canada have rallied to support Amritpal Singh.) Then, the very day before Modi’s democracy speech, Twitter withheld BBC News’ Punjabi-language account from view in India.
You don’t have to support the pro-separatist ‘Khalistan‘ movement that Amritpal Singh represents—or endorse his storming of a Punjabi police station in February to free one of his associates—to acknowledge that these blackouts defy the democratic virtues Modi claims to champion. Not that that’s stopped him before; as I’ve previously written, requests by India for Twitter to block tweets and accounts that contradict government messaging have ramped up exponentially during Modi’s tenure, to the point that Twitter sued India over the practice last July. But that was before Elon Musk took over the social network; there has been little movement in the suit since he took the reins. In the meantime, Twitter has acquiesced to Indian requests for censorship—including the mass takedown of tweets linking to a January BBC documentary about Modi—and also restored accounts of Hindu nationalists who’d been previously banned from Twitter for hate speech.
It’s unclear how much Musk knows about the political situation in India, but he’s undoubtedly aware of the Twitter lawsuit, as well as the persistence of India’s censorship. In late January, when the Intercept wrote about the crackdown on BBC’s Modi documentary, YouTuber David Freiheit tweeted out the piece and tagged Musk, asking whether Twitter had devolved into ‘outright censorship.’ In a reply, Musk claimed it was the ‘first I’ve heard‘ of the incident. News outlets noted the contradiction of a self-professed ‘free speech absolutist’ like Musk bowing to censorial pressure from international governments; notably, Musk claimed last year that he would not flout government laws in his quest to make Twitter a forum more conducive to free speech. And just about every action India has taken since with regard to social media obfuscation and protest disruption is technically legal due to various controversial bills that have passed during Modi’s rule.
What makes the latest social media crackdowns especially galling is the new national context in which they’ve emerged. India probably wanted Pakistan’s government censored online because, as Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann claims, Khalistan supporters been funded by Pakistani intelligence agencies and other shady outside sources. (While Mann has offered little proof with regard to the current situation, it is true that Pakistani sources have funded more violent Khalistani activists in past decades; nevertheless, it’s also true that @GovtOfPakistan has not tweeted about either Khalistan or Amritpal Singh.) The fact that officials blocked tens of millions of Punjabis from domestic communications and international sources of information while pursuing one lone figure sets a dangerous precedent for future law enforcement. India has frequently deployed long-term internet shutdowns in states like Haryana as well as Jammu and Kashmir, often to stifle digital organizing in protest of the government. The chilling implication of these latest crackdowns is that they’ll become a common tool for any government-sanctioned criminal chase. And these days, Indian law operates in an extreme, arbitrary manner, often arresting hundreds of citizens at a time for any form of protest, for any suspected dissent, for any perceived lawbreaking, even without proof.
One key example of this is playing out right now, on a grim scale. Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty who’s led spirited opposition to Modi’s regime, is now facing blatant persecution by the state for that very resistance, both in the physical and virtual realms. Last week, a court in Modi’s home state of Gujarat sentenced Gandhi to a two-year prison sentence over a 2019 speech in which he pointed out that the prime minister shares a surname with two infamous Indian criminals, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi, thus implicating Narendra Modi’s own lawlessness. The state court reasoned that this lone statement was defamatory against the head of state and thus disqualified Gandhi from civil service. Gandhi is not yet behind bars—he was granted bail in order to appeal the ruling at a higher court—but he’s been booted from his elected position in India’s Parliament, and may also be forced to vacate the home he was assigned as an MP. The flimsiness of the decision has fueled belief among Modi critics that Gandhi’s persecution is blatant political blowback, considering that the now-former MP led a mass ‘unity march‘ from September through January meant to demonstrate a direct ideological alternative to Modi’s hate-fueled politics. There’s also the fact that Gandhi and his supporters have accused YouTube of suppressing the reach of Gandhi-uploaded videos centered around Modi’s favorable treatment of disgraced billionaire Gautam Adani; according to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube’s executive team is looking into those accusations.
It’s easy to imagine a context where Gandhi is convicted and sentenced yet again, and where the Indian government decides to clamp down even more social media accounts related to Gandhi and his followers as they protest this move. Perhaps some of those very protesters will be charged under Indian law and chased throughout the subcontinent by government agents and police forces—in that case, you can reasonably expect that multiple Indian regions will lose access either to certain social media accounts or the entire internet altogether. So much for the best example of democracy in the world.
Ref: slate
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